WALDEN. 


BY   HENEY    D.   THOREAU, 

MTTHOR  OF  "A  WEEK  ON  TH1  CONCORD  AND  MERRIMACK  RIVEU." 


not  propose  to  write  an  ode  to  Rejection,  but  to  brag  as  lustily  as  chantlcleec  ii\  the 
morning,  standing  on  his  roost,  \f  only  to  wake  my  neighbors  up.  —  1'agc  9i 


BOSTON: 
JAMES    R.   OSGOOD   AND    COMPANY, 

LATE  TICKNOR  &  FIELD^,  AND  FIELDS,  OSQuODj  &  CO, 

187  b. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1854,  by 

HENRY    D.    THOREAT), 
IB  tk»  Clerk's  Dffice  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts 


UNIVERSITY  PRESS  :  WELCH,  EIGELOW,  &  Co., 
CAMBRIDGE. 


A 


CONTENTS. 


ECONOMY, 

WHERE  I  LIVED,  AND  WHAT  I  LIVED  FOJ 

EEAD,KG)  | 

SOUNDS,        L_ 

SOLITUDE,      V 

VISITORS,  __  j 

THE  BEAN-FIELD,  /•       •       •/     .......    168 

THE  VILLAGE,     .     7T    #**&*¥    ^  *  *".<  .    1*1 

THE  PONDS, 


BAKER  FAR]  ..........    217 


HIGHER  LAWS, 

BRUTE  NEIGHBORS 

HOUSE-WARMING, 

FORMER  INHABITANTS;   AND  WINTER  VISITORS 

WINTER  ANIMALS,   .        .  .  t~?  J) 

r 


THE  POND  IN  WINTER, 
SPRING. 


(3) 


ECONOMY. 


WHEN  I  v~f  e  the  following  pages,  or  rather  the 
bulk  of  them,  I  lived  alone,  in  the  woods,  a  mile  from 
any  neighbor,  in  a  house  which  I  had  built  myself,  on 
the  shore  of  Walden  Pond,  in  Concord,  Massachusetts, 
and  earned  my  living  by  the  labor  of  my  hands  only. 
I  lived  there  two  years  and  two  months.  At  present  I 
am  a  sojourner  in  civilized  life  again. 

I  should  not  obtrude  my  affairs  so  much  on  the 
notice  of  my  readers  if  very  particular  inquiries  had 
not  been  made  by  my  townsmen  concerning  my  mode 
of  life,  which  some  would  call  impertinent,  though  they 
do  not  appear  to  me  at  all  impertinent,  but,  considering 
the  circumstances,  very  natural  and  pertinent.  Some 
have  asked  what  I  got  to  eat ;  if  I  did  not  feel  lone 
some  ;  if  I  was  not  afraid ;  and  the  like.  Others  have 
been  curious  to  learn  what  portion  of  my  income  I 
devoted  to  charitable  purposes ;  and  some,  who  have 
large  families,  how  many  poor  children  I  maintained. 
I  will  therefore  ask  those  of  my  readers  who  feel  no 
particular  interest  in  me  to  pardon  me  if  I  undertake 
to  answer  some  of  these  questions  in  this  book.  ID 

(5) 


6  WALDEN. 

most  books,  the  7j  or  first  person,  is  omitted ;  in  ibis  it 
will  be  retained;  that,  in  respect  to  egotism,  is  the 
main  difference.  We  commonly  do  not  remember  that 
it  is,  after  all,  always  the  first  person  that  is  speaking. 
I  should  not  talk  so  much  about  myself  if  there  were 
any  body  else  whom  I  knew  as  well.  Unfortunately,  I 
am  confined  to  this  theme  by  the  narrowness  of  my 
experience.  Moreover,  I,  on  my  side,  require  of  every 
writer,  first  or  last,  a  simple  and  sincere  account  of  his 
own  life,  and  not  merely  what  he  has  heard  of  other 
men's  lives  ;  some  such  account  as  he  would  send  to  his 
kindred  from  a  distant  land ;  for  if  he  has  lived  sin 
cerely,  it  must  have  been  in  a  distant  land  to  me.  Per 
haps  these  pages  are  more  particularly  addressed  to 
poor  students.  As  for  the  rest  of  my  readers,  they 
will  accept  such  portions  as  apply  to  them.  I  trust 
that  none  will  stretch  the  seams  in  putting  on  the  coat, 
for  it  may  do  good  service  to  him  whom  it  fits. 

I  would  fain  say  something,  not  so  much  concerning 
the  Chinese  and  Sandwich  Islanders  as  you  who  read 
these  pages,  who  are  said  to  live  in  New  England ; 
something  about  your  condition,  especially  your  outward 
condition  or  circumstances  in  this  world,  in  this  town, 
what  it  is,  whether  it  is  necessary  that  it  be  as  bad  as  it 
is,  whether  it  cannot  be  improved  as  well  as  not.  I 
have  travelled  a  good  deal  in  Concord ;  and  every  where, 
in  shops,  and  offices,  and  fields,  the  inhabitants  have 
appeared  to  me  to  be  doing  penance  in  a  thousand 
remarkable  ways.  What  I  have  heard  of  Bramins 
sitting  exposed  to  four  fires  and  looking  in  the  face  of 
the  sun ;  or  hanging  suspended,  with  their  heads  down 
ward,  over  flames;  or  looking  at  the  heavens  over  their 
el.  ?uldera  "  until  it  becomes  impossible  for  them  to 


ECONOMY.  7 

resume  thc.r  natural  position,  while  from  the  twist  of 
the  neck  nothing  but  liquids  can  pass  into  the  stomach;*' 
or  dwelling,  chained  for  life,  at  the  foot  of  a  tree ;  or 
measuring  with  th  Mr  bodies,  like  caterpillars,  the  breadth 
of  vast  empires  ;  or  standing  on  one  leg  on  the  tops  of 
pillars,  —  even  these  forms  of  conscious  penance  are 
hardly  more  incredible  and  astonishing  than  the  scenes 
which  I  daily  witness.  The  twelve  labors  of  Herculeg 
were  trifling  in  comparison  with  those  which  my  neigh 
bors  have  undertaken ;  for  they  were  only  twelve,  and 
had  an  end ;  but  I  could  never  see  that  these  men  slew 
or  captured  any  monster  or  finished  any  labor.  They 
have  no  friend  lolas  to  burn  with  a  hot  iron  the  root  of 
the  hydra's  head,  but  as  soon  as  one  head  is  crushed, 
two  spring  up.  > 

I  see  young  men,  my  townsmen,  whose  misfortune  it 
is  to  have  inherited  farms,  houses,  barns,  cattle,  and 
farming  tools  ;  for  these  are  more  easily  acquired  than 
got  rid  of.  Better  if  they  had  been  born  in  the  open 
pasture  and  suckled  by  a  wolf,  that  they  might  have 
seen  with  clearer  eyes  what  field  they  were  called  to 
labor  in.  Who  made  them  serfs  of  the  soil  ?  Why 
should  they  eat  their  sixty  acres,  when  man  is  con 
demned  to  eat  only  his  peck  of  dirt?  Why  should 
they  begin  digging  their  graves  as  soon  as  they  are 
born  ?  They  have  got  to  live  a  man's  life,  pushing  all 
these  things  before  them,  and  get  on  as  well  as  they  can. 
How  many  a  poor  immortal  soul  have  I  met  well  nigh 
crushed  and  smothered  under  its  load,  creeping  down 
the  road  of  life,  pushing  before  it  a  barn  seventy-five 
feet  by  forty,  its  Augean  stables  never  cleansed,  and  cne 
hundred  acres  of  land,  tillage,  mowing,  pasture^  and 
wood-lot !  The  portionless,  who  struggle  with  no  such 


8  WALDEN. 

unnecessary  inherited  encumbrances,  find  it  labor  enough 
to  subdue  and  cultivate  a  few  cubic  feet  of  flesh. 

But  men  labor  under  a  mistake.  The  better  part  of 
the  man  is  soon  ploughed  into  the  soil  for  compost.  By  a 
seeming  fate,  commonly  called  necessity,  they  are  em 
ployed,  as  it  says  in  an  old  book,  laying  up  treasures 
which  moth  and  rust  will  corrupt  and  thieves  break 
through  and  steal.  It  is  a  fool's  life,  as  they  will  find 
when  they  get  to  the  end  of  it,  if  not  before.  It  is  said 
that  Deucalion  and  Pyrrha  created  men  by  throwing 
stones  over  their  heads  behind  them  :  — 

Inde  genus  durum  sumus,  experiensque  laborum, 
Et  documenta  damus  qua  simus  origine  nati. 

Or,  as  Raleigh  rhymes  it  in  his  sonorous  way, — 

"  From  thence  our  kind  hard-hearted  is,  enduring  pain  and  care, 
Approving  that  our  bodies  of  a  stony  nature  are." 

So  much  for  a  blind  obedience  to  a  blundering  oracle, 
throwing  the  stones  over  their  heads  behind  them,  and 
not  seeing  where  they  fell. 

Most  men,  even  in  this  comparatively  free  country, 
through  mere  ignorance  and  mistake,  are  so  occupied 
with  the  factitious  cares  and  superfluously  coarse  labors 
of  life  that  its  finer  fruits  cannot  be  plucked  by  them. 
Their  fingers,  from  excessive  toil,  are  too  clumsy  and 
tremble  too  much  for  that.  ,  Actually,  the  laboring  man 
has  not  leisure  for  a  true  integrity  day  by  day  ;  he  can 
not  afford  to  sustain  the  manliest  relations  to  men ;  his 
labor  would  be  depreciated  in  the  market.  He  has  no 
time  to  be  any  thing  but  a  machine.  How  can  he 
remember  well  his  ignorance  —  which  his  growth  re 
quires  -  -  who  has  so  often  to  use  his  knowledge  ?  "We 


ECONOMY.  9 

should  feed  and  clothe  him  gratuitously  sometimes,  and 
recruit  him  with  our  cordials,  before  we  judge  of  him. 
Ihe  finest  qualities  of  our  nature,  like  the  bloom  on 
fruits,  can  be  preserved  only  by  the  most  delicate  han 
dling.  Yet  we  do  not  treat  ourselves  nor  one  another 
thus  tenderly. 

Some  of  you,  we  all  know,  are  poor,  find  it  hard  to 
live,  are  sometimes,  as  it  were,  gasping  for  breath.  I 
have  no  doubt  that  some  of  you  who  read  this  book  are 
unable  to  pay  for  all  the  dinners  which  you  have  actual 
ly  eaten,  or  for  the  coats  and  shoes  which  are  fast  wear 
ing  or  are  already  worn  out,  and  have  come  to  this  page 
to  spend  borrowed  or  stolen  time,  robbing  your  creditors 
of  an  hour.  It  is  very  evident  what  mean  and  sneak 
ing  lives  many  of  you  live,  for  my  sight  has  been  whet 
ted  by  experience ;  always  on  the  limits,  trying  to  get 
into  business  and  trying  to  get  out  of  debt,  a  very  an 
cient  slough,  called  by  the  Latins  CBS  alienum,  another's 
brass,  for  some  of  their  coins  were  made  of  brass ;  still 
living,  and  dying,  and  buried  by  this  other's  brass ;  al 
ways  promising  to  pay,  promising  to  pay,  to-morrow, 
and  dying  to-day,  insolvent ;  seeking  to  cuiry  favor,  to 
get  custom,  by  how  many  modes,  only  not  state-prison 
offences ;  lying,  flattering,  voting,  contracting  yourselves 
into  a  nutshell  of  civility,  or  dilating  into  an  atmosphere 
of  thin  and  vaporous  generosity,  that  you  may  per 
suade  your  neighbor  to  let  you  make  his  shoes,  or  his 
hat,  or  his  coat,  or  his  carriage,  or  import  his  groceries 
for  him  ;  making  yourselves  sick,  that  you  may  lay  up 
something  against  a  sick  day,  something  to  be  tucked 
away  in  an  old  chest,  or  in  a  stocking  behind  the  plas 
tering,  or,  more  safely,  in  the  brick  bank  ;  no  matter 
where,  no  matter  how  much  or  how  little. 


10  WALDEN. 

I  sometimes  wonder  that  we  can  be  so  frVolotis,  T 
may  almost  say,  as  to  attend  to  the  gross  but  some\v  hat 
foreign  form  of  servitude  called  Negro  Slavery,  there 
are  so  many  keen  and  subtle  masters  that  enslave  both 
north  and  south.  It  is  hard  to  have  a  southern  over 
seer  ;  it  is  worse  to  have  a  northern  one ;  but  worst  of  all 
when  you  are  the  slave-driver  of  yourself.  Talk  of  a 
divinity  in  man !  Look  at  the  teamster  on  the  high 
way,  wending  to  market  by  day  or  night ;  does  any 
divinity  stir  within  him  ?  His  highest  duty  to  fodder 
and  water  his  horses !  What  is  his  destiny  to  him  com 
pared  with  the  shipping  interests  ?  Does  not  he  drive 
for  Squire  Make-a-stir?  How  godlike,  how  immortal,  is 
he  ?  See  how  he  cowers  and  sneaks,  how  vaguely  all 
the  day  he  fears,  not  being  immortal  nor  divine,  but  the 
slave  and  prisoner  of  his  own  opinion  of  himself,  a 
fame  won  by  his  own  deeds.  Public  opinion  is  a  weak 
tyrant  compared  with  our  own  private  opinion.  What  a 
man  thinks  of  himself,  that  it  is  which  determines,  or 
rather  indicates,  his  fate.  Self-emancipation  even  in 
the  West  Indian  provinces  of  the  fancy  and  imagina 
tion,  —  what  Wilberforce  is  there  to  bring  that  about  ? 
Think,  also,  of  the  ladies  of  the  land  weaving  toilet 
cushions  against  the  last  day,  not  to  betray  too  green  an 
interest  in  their  fates  !  As  if  you  could  kill  time  without 
injuring  eternity. 

The  mass  of  men  lead  lives  of  quiet  desperation. 
What  is  called  resignation  is  confirmed  desperation. 
From  the  desperate  city  you  go  into  the  desperate  coun 
try,  and  have  to  console  yourself  with  the  bravery  of 
minks  and  muskrats.  A  stereotyped  but  unconscious 
despair  is  concealed  even  under  what  are  called  the 
games  and  amusements  of  mankind.  There  is  no  play 


ECONOMY.  11 

in  them,  for  this  comes  after  work.     But  it  is  a  char 
acteristic  of  wisdom  not  to  do  desperate  things. 

When  we  consider  what,  to  use  the  words  of  the  cate 
chism,  is  the  chief  end  of  man,  and  what  are  the  true 
necessaries  and  means  of  life,  it  appears  as  if  men  had 
deliberately  chosen  the  common  mode  of  living  because 
they  preferred  it  to  any  other.  Yet  they  honestly  think 
there  is  no  choice  left.  But  alert  and  healthy  natures 
remember  that  the  sun  rose  clear.  It  is  never  too  late 
to  give  up  our  prejudices.  No  way  of  thinking  or  doing, 
however  ancient,  can  be  trusted  without  proof.  What 
every  body  echoes  or  in  silence  passes  by  as  true  to-day 
may  turn  out  to  be  falsehood  to-morrow,  mere  smoke  of 
opinion,  which  some  had  trusted  for  a  cloud  that  would 
sprinkle  fertilizing  rain  on  their  fields.  What  old  peo 
ple  say  you  cannot  do  you  try  and  find  that  you  can.  Old 
deeds  for  old  people,  and  new  deeds  for  new.  Old  peo 
ple  did  not  know  enough  once,  perchance,  to  fetch  fresh 
fuel  to  keep  the  fire  a-going ;  new  people  put  a  little  dry 
wood  under  a  pot,  and  are  whirled  round  the  globe  with 
the  speed  of  birds,  in  a  way  to  kill  old  people,  as  the 
phrase  is.  Age  is  no  better,  hardly  so  well,  qualified  for 
an  instructor  as  youth,  for  it  has  not  profited  so  much  as 
it  has  lost.  One  may  almost  doubt  if  the  wisest  man 
has  learned  any  thing  of  absolute  value  by  living 
Practically,  the  old  have  no  very  important  advice  to 
give  the  young,  their  own  experience  has  been  so  par 
tial,  and  their  lives  have  been  such  miserable  failures, 
for  private  reasons,  as  they  must  believe  ;  and  it  may  be 
that  they  have  some  faith  left  which  belies  that  experi 
ence,  and  they  are  only  less  young  than  they  were.  I 
have  lived  some  thirty  years  on  this  planet,  and  I  have 
yet  to  hear  the  firs:  syllable  of  valuable  or  even  earnest 


12  WALDEN. 

advice  from  my  seniors.  They  have  told  me  u  othing, 
and  probably  cannot  tell  me  any  thing,  to  the  purpose. 
Here  is  life,  an  experiment  to  a  great  extent  untried  by 
me ;  but  it  does  not  avail  me  that  they  have  tried  it.  If 
I  have  any  experience  which  I  think  valuable,  I  am  sure 
to  reflect  that  this  my  Mentors  said  nothing  about. 

One  farmer  says  to  me,  "  You  cannot  live  on  vegeta 
ble  food  solely,  for  it  furnishes  nothing  to  make  bones 
with  ; "  and  so  he  religiously  devotes  a  part  of  his  day  to 
supplying  his  system  with  the  raw  material  of  bones ; 
walking  all  the  while  he  talks  behind  his  oxen,  which, 
with  vegetable-made  bones,  jerk  him  and  his  lumber 
ing  plough  along  in  spite  of  every  obstacle.  Some 
things  are  really  necessaries  of  life  in  some  circles,  the 
most  helpless  and  diseased,  which  in  others  are  luxuries 
merely,  and  in  others  still  are  entirely  unknown. 

The  whole  ground  of  human  life  seems  to  some  to 
have  been  gone  over  by  their  predecessors,  both  the 
heights  and  the  valleys,  and  all  things  to  have  been 
cared  for.  According  to  Evelyn,  "  the  wise  Solomon 
prescribed  ordinances  for  the  very  distances  of  trees ; 
and  the  Roman  praetors  have  decided  how  often  you 
may  go  into  your  neighbor's  land  to  gather  the  acorns 
which  fall  on  it  without  trespass,  and  what  share  belongs 
to  that  neighbor."  Hippocrates  has  even  left  directions 
how  we  should  cut  our  nails ;  that  is,  even  with  the  ends 
of  the  fingers,  neither  shorter  nor  longer.  Undoubted 
ly  the  very  tedium  and  ennui  which  presume  to  have 
exhausted  the  variety  and  the  joys  of  life  are  as  old  as 
Adam.  But  man's  capacities  have  never  been  meas 
ured  ;  nor  are  we  to  judge  of  what  he  can  do  by 
any  precedents,  so  little  has  been  tried.  Whatever 
have  been  thy  failures  hitherto,  "be  not  afflicted,  my 


ECONOMY.  13 

child,  for  who  shall  assign  to  thee  what  thou  hast  left 
undone  ?  " 

We  might  try  our  lives  by  a  thousand  simple  tests  ; 
as,  for  instance,  that  the  same  sun  which  ripens  my 
beans  illumines  at  once  a  system  of  earths  like  ours. 
If  I  had  remembered  this  it  would  have  prevented  some 
mistakes.  This  was  not  the  light  in  which  I  hoed 
them.  The  stars  are  the  apexes  of  what  wonderful  tri 
angles  !  What  distant  and  different  beings  in  the  various 
mansions  of  the  universe  are  contemplating  the  same 
one  at  the  same  moment !  Nature  and  human  life  are 
as  various  as  our  several  constitutions.  Who  shall  say 
what  prospect  life  offers  to  another?  Could  a  greater 
miracle  take  place  than  for  us  to  look  through  each 
other's  eyes  for  an  instant  ?  We  should  live  in  all  the 
ages  of  the  world  in  an  hour ;  ay,  in  all  the  worlds  of 
the  ages.  History,  Poetry,  Mythology !  — - 1  know  of  no 
reading  of  another's  experience  so  startling  and  inform 
ing  as  this  would  be. 

The  greater  part  of  what  my  neighbors  call  good  I 
believe  in  my  soul  to  be  bad,  and  if  I  repent  of  any 
thing,  it  is  very  likely  to  be  my  good  behavior.  What 
demon  possessed  me  that  I  behaved  so  well  ?  You  may 
say  the  wisest  thing  you  can  old  man,  —  you  who  have 
lived  seventy  years,  not  without  honor  of  a  kind,  —  I 
hear  an  irresistible  voice  which  invites  me  away  from 
all  that.  One  generation  abandons  the  enterprises  of 
another  like  stranded  vessels. 

I  think  that  we  may  safely  trust  a  good  deal  more 
than  we  do.  We  may  waive  just  so  much  care  of  our 
selves  as  we  honestly  bestow  elsewhere.  Nature  is  as 
well  adapted  to  our  weakness  as  to  our  strength.  The 
incessant  anxiety  and  strain  of  some  is  a  well  nigh 


1 4  WALDEN. 

incurable  form  of  disease.  We  are  made  to  exagger 
ate  the  importance  of  what  work  we  do ;  and  yet  how 
much  is  not  done  by  us  !  or,  what  if  we  had  been  - 
taken  sick  ?  How  vigilant  we  are !  determined  not  to 
live  by  faith  if  we  can  avoid  it ;  all  the  day  long  on  the 
alert,  at  night  we  unwillingly  say  our  prayers  and  com 
mit  ourselves  to  uncertainties.  So  thoroughly  and  sin 
cerely  are  we  compelled  to  live,  reverencing  our  life, 
and  denying  the  possibility  of  change.  This  is  the  only 
way,  we  say ;  but  there  are  as  many  ways  as  there  can 
be  drawn  radii  from  one  centre  All  change  is  a  mira 
cle  to  contemplate ;  but  it  is  a  miracle  which  is  taking 
place  every  instant.  Confucius  said,  "  To  know  that  we 
know  what  we  know,  and  that  we  do  not  know  what  we 
io  not  know,  that  is  true  knowledge."  When  one  man 
has  reduced  a  fact  of  the  imagination  to  be  a  fact  to  his 
understanding,  I  foresee  that  all  men  will  at  length 
establish  their  lives  on  that  basis. 


Let  us  consider  for  a  moment  what  most  of  the  trou- 
bh  and  anxiety  which  I  have  referred  to  is  about,  and 
now  much  it  is  necessary  that  we  be  troubled,  or,  at  least, 
careful.  It  would  be  some  advantage  to  live  a  primi 
tive  and  frontier  life,  though  in  the  midst  of  an  outward 
civilization,  if  only  to  learn  what  are  the  gross  necessa 
ries  of  life  and  what  methods  have  been  taken  to  obtain 
them;  or  even  to  look  over  the  old  day-books  of  the 
merchants,  to  see  what  it  was  that  men  most  commonly 
bought  at  the  stores,  what  they  stored,  that  is,  what 
are  the  grossest  groceries.  For  the  improvements  of 
ages  have  had  but  little  influence  on  the  essential 
laws  of  man's  existence ;  as  our  skeletons,  proba- 


ECONOMY.  15 

bly,   are   not   to  be   distinguished  from   those  of  our 
ancestors. 

By  the  words,  necessary  of  life,  I  mean  whatever,  of 
all  that  man  obtains  by  his  own  exertions,  has  been 
from  the  first,  or  from  long  use  has  become,  so  im 
portant  to  human  life  that  few,  if  any,  whether  from 
savageness,  or  poverty,  or  philosophy,  ever  attempt  to 
do  without  it.  To  many  creatures  there  is  in  this 
sense  but  one  necessary  of  life,  Food.  To  the  bison  of 
the  prairie  it  is  a  few  inches  of  palatable  grass,  with 
water  to  drink ;  unless  he  seeks  the  Shelter  of  the  forest 
or  the  mountain's  shadow.  None  of  the  brute  creation 
requires  more  than  Food  and  Shelter.  The  necessaries 
of  life  for  man  in  this  climate  may,  accurately  enough, 
be  distributed  under  the  several  heads  of  Food,  Shelter, 
Clothing,  and  Fuel ;  for  not  till  we  have  secured  these  are 
we  prepared  to  entertain  the  true  problems  of  life  witr* 
freedom  and  a  prospect  of  success.  Man  has  invented, 
not  only  houses,  but  clothes  and  cooked  food ;  and  pos 
sibly  from  the  accidental  discovery  of  the  warmth  of 
fire,  and  the  consequent  use  of  it,  at  first  a  luxury, 
arose  the  present  necessity  to  sit  by  it.  We  observe 
cats  and  dogs  acquiring  the  same  second  nature.  By 
proper  Shelter  and  Clothing  we  legitimately  retain  our 
own  internal  heat ;  but  with  an  excess  of  these,  or  of 
Fuel,  that  is,  with  an  external  heat  greater  than  our  own 
internal,  may  not  cookery  properly  be  said  to  begin  ? 
Darwin,  the  naturalist,  says  of  the  inhabitants  of  Tierra 
del  Fuego,  that  while  his  own  party,  who  were  well 
clothed  and  sitting  close  to  a  fire,  were  far  from  too 
warm,  these  naked  savages,  who  were  farther  off,  were 
observed,  to  his  great  surprise,  "  to  ^e  streaming  with 
perspiration  at  undergoing  such  a  roasting."  So,  we 


16  WALDEN. 

are  told,  the  New  Hollander  goes  naked  with  impunity, 
while  the  European  shivers  in  his  clothes.  Is  it  impos 
sible  to  combine  the  hardiness  of  these  savages  with  the 
intellectualness  of  the  civilized  man  ?  According  to 
Liebig,  man's  body  is  a  stove,  and  food  the  fuel  which 
keeps  up  the  internal  combustion  in  the  lungs.  In  cold 
weather  we  eat  more,  in  warm  less.  The  animal  heat 
is  the  result  of  a  slow  combustion,  and  disease  and  death 
take  place  when  this  is  too  rapid ;  or  for  want  of  fuel,  or 
from  some  defect  in  the  draught,  the  fire  goes  out.  Of 
course  the  vital  heat  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  fire  ; 
but  so  much  for  analogy.  It  appears,  therefore,  from 
the  above  list,  that  the  expression,  animal  life,  is  nearly 
synonymous  with  the  expression,  animal  heat ;  for  while 
Food  may  be  regarded  as  the  Fuel  which  keeps  up  the 
fire  within  us,  —  and  Fuel  serves  only  to  prepare  that 
Food  or  to  increase  the  warmth  of  our  bodies  by  addi 
tion  from  without,  —  Shelter  and  Clothing  also  serve 
only  to  retain  the  heat  thus  generated  and  absorbed. 

The  grand  necessity,  then,  for  our  bodies,  is  to  keep 
warm,  to  keep  the  vital  heat  in  us.  What  pains  we 
accordingly  take,  not  only  with  our  Food,  and  Clothing, 
and  Shelter,  but  with  our  beds,  which  are  our  night- 
clothes,  robbing  the  nests  and  breasts  of  birds  to  pre 
pare  this  shelter  within  a  shelter,  as  the  mole  has  its 
bed  of  grass  and  leaves  at  the  end  of  its  burrow  !  The 
poor  man  is  wont  to  complain  that  this  is  a  cold  world ; 
and  to  cold,  no  less  physical  than  Asocial,  we  refer  direct 
ly  a  great  part  of  our  ails.  The  summer,  in  some  cli 
mates,  makes  possible  to  man  a  sort  of  Elysian  life. 
Fuel,  except  to  cook  his  Food,  is  then  unnecessary ;  the 
sun  is  his  fire,  and  many  of  the  fruits  are  sufficiently 
cooked  by  its  rays ;  while  Food  generally  is  more  vari 


ECONOMY.  17 

ous,  and  more  easily  obtained,  and  Clothing  and  Shelter 
are  wholly  or  half  unnecessary.  At  the  present  day, 
and  in  this  country,  as  I  find  by  my  own  experience,  a 
few  implements,  a  knife,  an  axe,  a  spade,  a  wheelbar 
row,  &c.,  and  for  the  studious,  lamplight,  stationery,  and 
access  to  a  few  books,  rank  next  to  necessaries,  and  can 
all  be  obtained  at  a  trifling  cost.  Yet  some,  not  wise, 
go  to  the  other  side  of  the  globe,  to  barbarous  and  un 
healthy  regions,  and  devote  themselves  to  trade  for  ten 
or  twenty  years,  in  order  that  they  may  live,  —  that  is, 
keep  comfortably  warm,  —  and  die  in  New  England  at, 
last.  The  luxuriously  rich  are  not  simply  kept  comfort 
ably  warm,  but  unnaturally  hot ;  as  I  implied  before, 
they  are  cooked,  of  course  d  la  mode. 

Most  of  the  luxuries,  and  many  of  the  so  called  com 
forts  of  life,  are  not  only  not  indispensable,  but  positive 
hinderances  to  the  elevation  of  mankind.  With  respect 
to  luxuries  and  comforts,  the  wisest  have  ever  lived  a 
more  simple  and  meagre  life  than  the  poor.  The 
ancient  philosophers,  Chinese,  Hindoo,  Persian,  and 
Greek,  were  a  class  than  which  none  has  been  poorer 
in  outward  riches,  none  so  rich  in  inward.  We  know 
not  much  about  them.  It  is  remarkable  that  we  know 
so  much  of  them  as  we  do.  The  same  is  true  of  the 
more  modern  reformers  and  bene/actors  of  their  race 
None  can  be  an  impartial  or  wise  observer  of  human 
life  but  from  the  vantage  ground  of  what  we  should  call 
voluntary  poverty.  Of  a  life  of  luxury  the  fruit  is 
luxury,  whether  in  agriculture,  or  commerce,  or  litera 
ture,  or  art.  There  are  nowadays  professors  of  philos 
ophy,  but  not  philosophers.  Yet  it  is  admirable  to 
profess  because  it  was  once  admirable  to  live.  To  be  a 
philosopher  is  not  merely  to  have  subtle  thoughts,  nor 
2 


18  WALDETT. 

even  to  found  a  school,  but  so  to  love  wisdcm  as  to  live 
according  to  its  dictates,  a  life  of  simplicity,  independ 
ence,  magnanimity,  and  trust.  It  is  to  solve  some  of 
the  problems  of  life,  not  only  theoretically,  but  practi 
cally.  The  success  of  great  scholars  and  thinkers  is 
commonly  a  courtier-like  success,  not  kingly,  not  manly. 
They  make  shift  to  live  merely  by  conformity,  practi 
cally  as  their  fathers  did,  and  are  in  no  sense  the  pro 
genitors  of  a  nobler  race  of  men.  But  why  do  men 
degenerate  ever  ?  What  makes  families  run  out  ? 
What  is  the  nature  of  the  luxury  which  enervates  and 
destroys  nations  ?  Are  we  sure  that  there  is  none  of  it 
in  our  own  lives  ?  The  philosopher  is  in  advance  of  his 
age  even  in  the  outward  form  of  his  life.  He  is  not 
fed,  sheltered,  clothed,  warmed,  like  his  contemporaries. 
How  can  a  man  be  a  philosopher  and  not  maintain  his 
vital  heat  by  better  methods  than  other  men  ? 

When  a  man  is  warmed  by  the  several  modes  which 
I  have  described,  what  does  he  want  next  ?  Surely  not 
more  warmth  of  the  same  kind,  as  more  and  richer 
food,  larger  and  more  splendid  houses,  finer  and  more 
abundant  clothing,  more  numerous  incessant  and  hoi  ter 
fires,  and  the  like.  When  he  has  obtained  those  things 
which  are  necessary  to  life,  there  is  another  alternative 
than  to  obtain  the  superfluities ;  and  that  is,  to  adven 
ture  on  life  now,  his  vacation  from  humbler  toil  having 
commenced.  The  soil,  it  appears,  is  suited  to  the  seed, 
for  it  has  sent  its  radicle  downward,  and  it  may  now 
send  its  shoot  upward  also  with  confidence.  Why  has 
man  rooted  himself  thus  firmly  in  the  earth,  but  that  he 
may  rise  in  the  same  proportion  into  the  heavens  above? 
—  for  the  nobler  plants  are  valued  for  the  fruit  they 
bear  at  last  in  the  air  and  light,  far  from  the  ground,  and 


ECONOMY.  19 

are  not  treated  like  the  humbler  esculents,"  which, 
though  they  may  be  biennials,  are  cultivated  only  till 
they  have  perfected  their  root,  and  often  cut  down  at 
top  for  this  purpose,  so  that  most  would  not  know  them 
in  their  flowering  season. 

I  do  not  mean  to  prescribe  rules  to  strong  and  valiant 
natures,  who  will  mind  their  own  affairs  whether  in 
heaven  or  hell,  and  perchance  build  more  magnificently 
and  spend  more  lavishly  than  the  richest,  without  ever 
impoverishing  themselves,  not  knowing  how  they  live, 

—  if,  indeed,  there  are  any  such,  as  has  been  dreamed  ; 
nor  to  those  who  find  their  encouragement  arid  inspira 
tion  in  precisely  the  present  condition  of  things,  and 
cherish  it  with  the  fondness  and  enthusiasm  of  lovers, 

—  and,  to  some  extent,  I  reckon  myself  in  this  number  ; 
I  do  not  speak   to   those  who  are  well  employed,  in 
whatever  circumstances,  and  they  know  whether  they 
are  well  employed  or  not ;  —  but  mainly  to  the  mass  of 
men  who  are  discontented,  and  idly  complaining  of  the 
hardness  of  their  lot  or  of  the  times,  when  they  might 
improve  them.     There   are   some  who  complain  most 
energetically  and  inconsolably  of  any,  because  they  are, 
as  they  say,  doing  their  duty.     I  also  have  in  my  mind 
that  seemingly  wealthy,  but  most  terribly  impoverished 
class  of  all,  who  have  accumulated  dross,  but  know  not 
how  to  use  it,  or  get  rid  of  it,  and  thus  have  forged 
their  own  golden  or  silver  fetters. 


If  I  should  attempt  to  tell  how  I  have  desired  to 
spend  my  life  in  years  past,  it  would  probably  surprise 
those  of  my  readers  who  are  somewhat  acquainted  with 
its  actual  history ;  it  would  certainly  astonish  those  who 


20  WALDEN. 

know  nothing  about  it.  I  will  only  hint  at  some  of  thfe 
enterprises  which  I  have  cherished. 

In  any  weather,  at  any  hour  of  the  day  or  night,  I 
have  been  anxious  to  improve  the  nick  of  time,  and 
notch  it  on  my  stick  too ;  to  stand  on  the  meeting  of  two 
eternities,  the  past  and  future,  which  is  precisely  the 
present  moment ;  to  toe  that  line.  You  will  pardon 
some  obscurities,  for  there  are  more  secrets  in  my  trade 
than  in  most  men's,  and  yet  not  voluntarily  kept,  but 
inseparable  from  its  very  nature.  I  would  gladly  tell 
all  that  I  know  about  it,  and  never  paint  "  No  Admit 
tance  "  on  my  gate. 

I  long  ago  lost  a  hound,  a  bay  horse,  and  a  turtle 
dove,  and  am  still  on  their  trail.  Many  are  the  travel 
lers  I  have  spoken  concerning  them,  describing  the> 
tracks  and  what  calls  they  answered  to.  I  have  m^t 
one  or  two  who  had  heard  the  hound,  and  the  tramp  of 
the  horse,  and  even  seen  the  dove  disappear  behind  a 
cloud,  and  they  seemed  as  anxious  to  recover  them  as 
if  they  had  lost  them  themselves. 

To  anticipate,  not  the  sunrise  and  the  dawn  merely, 
but,  if  possible,  Nature  herself !  How  many  mornings, 
summer  and  winter,  before  yet  any  neighbor  was  stirring 
about  his  business,  have  I  been  about  mine !  No  doubt, 
many  of  my  townsmen  have  met  me  returning  from 
this  enterprise,  farmers  starting  for  Boston  in  the 
twilight,  or  woodchoppers  going  to  their  work.  It  is 
true,  I  never  assisted  the  sun  materially  in  his  rising, 
but,  doubt  not,  it  was  of  the  last  importance  only  to  be 
present  at  it. 

So  many  autumn,  ay,  and  winter  days,  spent  outside 
the  town,  trying  to  hear  what  was  in  the  wind,  to  hear 
and  carry  it  express  !  I  well-nigh  sunk  all  my  capital 


ECONOMY.  21 

in  it,  and  lost  my  own  breath  into  the  bargain,  running 
in  the  face  of  it.  If  it  had  concerned  either  of  the  po 
litical  parties,  depend  upon  it,  it  would  have  appeared 
in  the  Gazette  with  the  earliest  intelligence.  At  other 
times  watching  from  the  observatory  of  some  cliff  or 
tree,  to  telegraph  any  new  arrival;  or  waiting  at  even 
ing  on  the  hill-tops  for  the  sky  to  fall,  that  I  might  catch 
something,  though  I  never  caught  much,  and  that,  manna- 
wise,  would  dissolve  again  in  the  sun. 

For  a  long  time  I  was  reporter  to  a  journal,  of  no 
very  wide  circulation,  whose  editor  has  never  yet  seen 
fit  to  print  the  bulk  of  my  contributions,  and,  as  is  too 
common  with  writers,  I  got  only  my  labor  for  my  pains. 
However,  in  this  case  my  pains  were  their  own  reward. 

For  many  years  I  was  self-appointed  inspector  of 
snow  storms  and  rain  storms,  and  did  my  duty  faithful 
ly  ;  surveyor,  if  not  of  highways,  then  of  forest  paths 
and  all  across-lot  routes,  keeping  them  open,  and  ravines 
bridged  and  passable  at  all  seasons,  where  the  public 
heel  had  testified  to  their  utility. 

I  have  looked  after  the  wild  stock  of  the  town,  which 
give  a  faithful  herdsman  a  good  deal  of  trouble  by  leap 
ing  fences ;  and  I  have  had  an  eye  to  the  unfrequented 
nooks  and  corners  of  the  farm ;  though  I  did  not  always 
know  whether  Jonas  or  Solomon  worked  in  a  particular 
field  to-day  ;  that  was  none  of  my  business.  I  have 
watered  the  red  huckleberry,  the  sand  cherry  and  the 
nettle  tree,  the  red  pine  and  the  black  ash,  the  white 
grape  and  the  yellow  violet,  which  might  have  withered 
else  in  dry  seasons. 

In  short,  I  went  on  thus  for  a  long  time,  I  may  say  it 
without  boasting,  faithfully  minding  my  business,  till  it 
became  more  and  more  evident  that  my  townsmen 


22  WALDEN. 

would  not  after  all  admit  me  into  the  list  of  towt. 
officers,  nor  make  my  place  a  sinecure  with  a  moderate 
allowance.  My  accounts,  which  I  can  swear  to  have 
kept  faithfully,  I  have,  indeed,  never  got  audited,  still 
less  accepted,  still  less  paid  and  settled.  However,  I 
have  not  set  my  heart  on  that. 

Npt  long  since,  a  strolling  Indian  went  to  sell  baskets 
at  the  house  of  a  well-known  lawyer  in  my  neighbor 
hood.  "  Do  you  wish  to  buy  any  baskets  ?  "  he  asked. 
"  No,  we  do  not  want  any,"  was  the  reply.  "  What !  " 
exclaimed  the  Indian  as  he  went  out  the  gate,  "  do  you 
mean  to  starve  us  ?  "  Having  seen  his  industrious  white 
neighbors  so  well  off, —  that  the  lawyer  had  only  to 
weave  arguments,  and  by  some  magic  wealth  and  stand 
ing  followed,  he  had  said  to  himself;  I  will  go  into  busi 
ness  ;  I  will  weave  baskets ;  it  is  a  thing  which  I  can 
do.  Thinking  that  when  he  had  made  the  baskets  he 
would  have  done  his  part,  and  then  it  would  be  the  white 
mail's  to  buy  them.  He  had  not  discovered  that  it  was 
necessary  for  him  to  make  it  worth  the  other's  while  to 
buy  them,  or  at  least  make  him  think  that  it  was  so,  or 
to  make  something  else  which  it  would  be  worth  his 
while  to  buy.  I  too  had  woven  a  kind  of  basket  of  a 
delicate  texture,  but  I  had  not  made  it  worth  any  one's 
while  to  buy  them.  Yet  not  the  less,  in  my  case,  did  I 
think  it  worth  my  while  to  weave  them,  and  instead  of 
studying  how  to  make  it  worth  men's  while  to  buy  my 
baskets,  I  studied  rather  how  to  avoid  the  necessity  of 
gelling  them.  Tho  life  which  men  praise  and  regard  aa 
successful  is  but  one  kind.  Why  should  we  exaggerate 
any  one  kind  at  the  expense  of  the  others  ? 

Finding  that  my  fellow-citizens  were  not  likely  to 
ofler  me  any  room  in  the  court  house,  or  any  curacy  or 


ECONOMY.  23 

living  any  where  else,  but  I  must  shift  for  myself,  I 
Burned  my  face  more  exclusively  than  ever  to  the  woods, 
where  I  was  better  known.  I  determined  to  go  into 
Business  at  once,  and  not  wait  to  acquire  the  usual  capi 
ta!,  using  such  slender  means  as  I  had  already  got.  My 
purpose  in  going  to  Walden  Pond  was  not  to  live  cheap 
ly  nor  to  live  dearly  there,  but  to  transact  some  private 
business  with  the  fewest  obstacles  ;  to  be  hindered  from 
accomplishing  which  for  want  of  a  little  common  sense, 
a  little  enterprise  and  business  talent,  appeared  not  sc 
sad  as  foolish. 

I  have  always  endeavored  to  acquire  strict  business 
Kahits  ;  they  are  indispensable  to  every  man.  If  your 
trade  is  with  the  Celestial  Empire,  then  some  small  count 
ing  house  on  the  coast,  in  some  Salem  harbor,  will  be 
fixture  enough.  You  will  export  such  articles  as  the 
country  affords,  purely  native  products,  much  ice  and 
pine  timber  and  a  little  granite,  always  in  native  bot 
toms.  These  will  be  good  ventures.  To  oversee  all  the 
details  yourself  in  person ;  to  be  at  once  pilot  and  cap 
tain,  and  owner  and  underwriter ;  to  buy  and  sell  and 
keep  the  accounts ;  to  read  every  letter  received,  and 
write  or  read  every  letter  sent ;  to  superintend  the  dis 
charge  of  imports  night  and  day ;  to  be  upon  many 
parts  of  the  coast  almost  at  the  same  time ;  —  often  the 
richest  freight  will  be  discharged  upon  a  Jersey  shore  ; 
—  to  be  your  own  telegraph,  unweariedly  sweeping  the 
horizon,  speaking  all  passing  vessels  bound  coastwise ; 
to  keep  up  a  steady  despatch  of  commodities,  for  the 
supply  of  such  a  distant  and  exorbitant  market ;  to  keep 
yourself  informed  of  the  state  of  the  markets,  prospects 
of  war  and  peace  every  where,  and  anticipate  the  ten 
dencies  of  trade  and  civilization,  —  taking  advantage  of 


24  WALDEN. 

the  results  of  all  exploring  expeditions,  using  new  pas 
sages  and  all  improvements  in  navigation ;  —  charts  to 
be  studied,  the  position  of  reefs  and  new  lights  and 
buoys  to  be  ascertained,  and  ever,  and  ever,  the  loga 
rithmic  tables  to  be  corrected,  for  by  the  error  of  some 
calculator  the  vessel  often  splits  upon  a  rock  that  should 
have  reached  a  friendly  pier,  —  there  is  the  untold  fate 
of  La  Perouse ;  —  universal  science  to  be  kept  pace 
with,  studying  the  lives  of  all  great  discoverers  and 
navigators,  great  adventurers  and  merchants,  from  Han- 
no  and  the  Phoenicians  down  to  our  day ;  in  fine,  ac 
count  of  stock  to  be  taken  from  time  to  time,  to  know 
how  you  stand.  It  is  a  labor  to  task  the  faculties  of  a 
man,  —  such  problems  of  profit  and  loss,  of  interest,  of 
tare  and  tret,  and  gauging  of  all  kinds  in  it,  as  demand 
a  universal  knowledge. 

I  have  thought  that  Walden  Pond  would  be  a  good 
place  for  business,  not  solely  on  account  of  the  railroad 
and  the  ice  trade ;  it  offers  advantages  which  it  may  not 
be  good  policy  to  divulge ;  it  is  a  good  post  and  a  good 
foundation.  No  Neva  marshes  to  be  filled  ;  though  you 
must  every  where  build  on  piles  of  your  own  driving. 
It  is  said  that  a  flood-tide,  with  a  westerly  wind,  and  ice 
in  the  Neva,  would  sweep  St.  Petersburg  from  the  face 
of  the  earth. 


As  this  business  was  to  be  entered  into  without  the 
usual  capital,  it  may  not  be  easy  to  conjecture  where 
these  means,  that  will  still  be  indispensable  to  every 
such  undertaking,  were  to  be  obtained.  As  for  Clothing, 
to  come  at  once  to  the  practical  part  of  the  question, 
perhaps  we  are  led  oftener  by  the  love  of  novelty,  and 


CLOTHING.  25 

a  regard  for  the  opinions  of  men,  in  procuring  it,  than 
by  a  true  utility.  Let  him  who  has  work  to  do  recol 
lect  that  the  object  of  clothing  is,  first,  to  retain  the  vital 
heat,  and  secondly,  in  this  state  of  society,  to  cover 
nakedness,  and  he  may  judge  how  much  of  any  neces 
sary  or  important  work  may  be  accomplished  without 
adding  to  his  wardrobe.  Kings  and  queens  who  wear  a 
fiuit  but  once,  though  made  by  some  tailor  or  dress 
maker  to  their  majesties,  cannot  know  the  comfort  of 
wearing  a  suit  that  fits.  They  are  no  better  than  wooden 
horses  to  hang  the  clean  clothes  on.  Every  day  our 
garments  become  more  assimilated  to  ourselves,  receiv 
ing  the  impress  of  the  wearer's  character,  until  we  hesi 
tate  to  lay  them  aside,  without  such  delay  and  medical 
appliances  and  some  such  solemnity  even  as  our  bodies. 
No  man  ever  stood  the  lower  in  my  estimation  for  hav 
ing  a  patch  in  his  clothes ;  yet  I  am  sure  that  there  is 
greater  anxiety,  commonly,  to'have  fashionable,  or  at 
least  clean  and  unpatched  clothes,  than  to  have  a  sound 
conscience.  But  even  if  the  rent  is  not  mended,  perhaps 
the  worst  vice  betrayed  is  improvidence.  I  sometimes  try 
my  acquaintances  by  such  tests  as  this; — who  could  wear 
a  patch,  or  two  extra  seams  only,  over  the  knee?  Most 
behave  as  if  they  believed  that  their  prospects  for  life 
would  be  ruined  if  they  should  do  it.  It  would  be  easier 
for  them  to  hobble  to  town  with  a  broken  leg  than  with 
a  broken  pantaloon.  Often  if  an  accident  happens  to  a 
gentleman's  legs,  they  can  be  mended  ;  but  if  a  similar 
accident  happens  to  the  legs  of  his  pantaloons,  there  is 
no  help  for  it ;  for  he  considers,  not  what  is  truly  re 
spectable,  but  what  is  respected.  We  know  but  few 
men,  a  great  many  coats  and  breeches.  Dress  a  scare* 
crow  in  you-  last  shift,  you  standing  shiftless  by,  who 


26  WALDEN. 

would  not  soonest  salute  the  scarecrow  ?  Passing  a 
cornfield  the  other  day,  close  by  a  hat  and  coat  on  a 
stake,  I  recognized  the  owner  of  the  farm.  He  was 
only  a  little  more  weather-beaten  than  when  I  saw  him 
last.  I  have  heard  of  a  dog  that  barked  at  every 
stranger  who  approached  his  master's  premises  with 
clothes  on,  but  was  easily  quieted  by  a  naked  thief.  It 
is  an  interesting  question  how  far  men  would  retain  their 
relative  rank  if  they  were  divested  of  their  clothes. 
Could  you,  in  such  a  case,  tell  surely  of  any  company 
of  civilized  men,  which  belonged  to  the  most  respected 
class  ?  When  Madam  Pfeiifer,  in  her  adventurous  travels 
round  the  world,  from  east  to  west,  had  got  so  near  home 
as  Asiatic  Russia,  she  says  that  she  felt  the  necessity  of 
wearing  other  than  a  travelling  dress,  when  she  went  to 
meet  the  authorities,  for  she  "  was  now  in  a  civilized 

country,  where people  are  judged  of  by  their 

clothes."  Even  in  our  democratic  New  England  towns 
the  accidental  possession  of  wealth,  and  its  manifestation 
in  dress  and  equipage  alone,  obtain  for  the  possessor 
almost  universal  respect.  But  they  who  yield  such  re 
spect,  numerous  as  they  are,  are  so  far  heathen,  and  need 
to  have  a  missionary  sent  to  them.  Beside,  clothes  in 
troduced  sewing,  a  kind  of  work  which  you  may  call 
endless ;  a  woman's  dress,  at  least,  is  never  done. 

A  man  who  has  at  length  found  something  to  do  will 
not  need  to  get  a  new  suit  to  do  it  in ;  for  him  the  old 
will  do,  that  has  lain  dusty  in  the  garret  for  an  indeter 
minate  period.  Old  shoes  will  serve  a  hero  longer  than 
they  have  served  his  valet,  —  if  a  hero  ever  has  a  valet, 
—  bare  feet  are  older  than  shoes,  and  he  can  make  them 
do.  Only  they  who  go  to  soirees  and  legislative  halls 
must  have  new  coats,  coats  to  change  as  often  as  tha 


CLOTHI1NG.  27 

man  changes  in  them.  But  if  my  jacket  and  trousers, 
my  liat  and  shoss,  are  fit  to  worship  God  in,  they  will 
do ;  will  they  not  ?  Who  ever  saw  his  old  clothes,  — 
his  old  coat,  actually  worn  out,  resolved  into  its  primi 
tive  elements,  so  that  it  was  not  a  deed  of  charity  to  be 
stow  it  on  some  poor  boy,  by  him  perchance  to  be  be 
stowed  on  some  poorer  still,  or  shall  we  say  richer,  who 
could  do  with  less  ?  I  say,  beware  of  all  enterprises  that 
require  new  clothes,  and  not  rather  a  new  wearer  of 
clothes.  If  there  is  not  a  new  man,  how  can  the  new 
clothes  be  made  to  fit  ?  If  you  have  any  enterprise  be 
fore  you,  try  it  in  your  old  clothes.  All  men  want,  not 
something  to  do  with,  but  something  to  do,  or  rather 
something  to  be.  Perhaps  we  should  never  procure  a 
new  suit,  however  ragged  or  dirty  the  old,  until  we  have 
so  conducted,  so  enterprised  or  sailed  in  some  way,  that 
we  feel  like  new  men  in  the  old,  and  that  to  retain  it 
would  be  like  keeping  new  wine  in  old  bottles.  Our 
moulting  season,  like  that  of  the  fowls,  must  be  a  crisis  in 
our  lives.  The  loon  retires  to  solitary  ponds  to  spend 
it.  Thus  also  the  snake  casts  its  slough,  and  the  cater 
pillar  its  wormy  coat,  by  an  internal  industry  and  ex 
pansion;  for  clothes  are  but  our  outmost  cuticle  and 
mortal  coil.  Otherwise  we  shall  be  found  sailing  under 
false  colors,  and  be  inevitably  cashiered  at  last  by  our 
own  opinion,  as  well  as  that  of  mankind. 

We  don  garment  after  garment,  as  if  we  grew  like 
exogenous  plants  by  addition  without.  Our  outside  and 
often  thin  and  fanciful  clothes  are  our  epidermis  or  false 
skin,  which  partakes  not  of  our  life,  and  may  be  stripped 
off  here  and  there  without  fatal  injury;  our  thicker  gar 
ments,  constantly  worn,  are  our  cellular  integument,  or 
cortex ;  but  our  shirts  are  our  liber  or  true  bark,  which 


28  WALDEN. 

cannot  be  removed  without  girdling  and  so  destroying 
the  man.  I  believe  that  ah1  races  at  some  seasons  wear 
something  equivalent  to  the  shirt.  It  is  desirable  that  a 
man  be  clad  so  simply  that  he  can  lay  his  hands  on  him 
self  in  the  dark,  and  that  he  live  in  all  respects  so  com 
pactly  and  preparedly,  that,  if  an  enemy  take  the  town, 
he  can,  like  the  old  philosopher,  walk  out  the  gate  empty- 
Landed  without  anxiety.  While  one  thick  garment  is, 
for  most  purposes,  as  good  as  three  thin  ones,  and  cheap 
clothing  can  be  obtained  at  prices  really  to  suit  custom 
ers  ;  while  a  thick  coat  can  be  bought  for  five  dollars, 
which  will  last  as  many  years,  thick  pantaloons  for  two 
dollars,  cowhide  boots  for  a  dollar  and  a  half  a  pair,  a 
summer  hat  for  a  quarter  of  a  dollar,  and  a  winter  cap 
for  sixty-two  and  a  half  cents,  or  a  better  be  made  at 
home  at  a  nominal  cost,  where  is  he  so  poor  that,  clad 
in  such  a  suit,  of  his  own  earning,  there  will  not  be 
found  wise  men  to  do  him  reverence  ? 

When  I  ask  for  a  garment  of  a  particular  form,  my 
tailoress  tells  me  gravely,  "  They  do  not  make  them  so 
now,"  not  emphasizing  the  "  They"  at  all,  as  if  she  quoted 
an  authority  as  impersonal  as  the  Fates,  and  I  find  it  dif 
ficult  to  get  made  what  I  want,  simply  because  she  cannot 
believe  that  I  mean  what  I  say,  that  I  am  so  rash.  When 
I  hear  this  oracular  sentence,  I  am  for  a  moment  ab 
sorbed  in  thought,  emphasizing  to  myself  each  word 
separately  that  I  may  come  at  the  meaning  of  it,  that  I 
may  find  out  by  what  degree  of  consanguinity  They 
are  related  to  me,  and  what  authority  they  may  have 
in  an  affair  which  affects  me  so  nearly ;  and,  finally, 
I  am  inclined  to  answer  her  with  equal  mystery,  and 
without  any  more  emphasis  of  the  "  they,"  —  "  It  is 
true,  they  dil  not  make  them  so  recently,  but  they  do 


CLOTHING.  29 

now."  Of  what  use  this  measuring  of  me  if  she  does 
not  measure  my  character,  but  only  the  breadth  of  my 
shoulders,  as  it  were  a  peg  to  hang  the  coat  on  ?  We 
worship  not  the  Graces,  nor  the  Parcse,  but  Fashion. 
She  spins  and  weaves  and  cuts  with  full  authority. 
The  head  monkey  at  Paris  puts  on  a  traveller's  cap,  and 
all  the  monkeys  in  America  do  the  same.  I  sometimes 
despair  of  getting  any  thing  quite  simple  and  honest 
done  in  this  world  by  the  help  of  men.  They  would 
have  to  be  passed  through  a  powerful  press  first,  to 
squeeze  their  old  notions  out  of  them,  so  that  they  would 
not  soon  get  upon  their  legs  again,  and  then  there  would 
be  some  one  in  the  company  with  a  maggot  in  his  head, 
hatched  from  an  egg  deposited  there  nobody  knows 
when,  for  not  even  fire  kills  these  things,  and  you  would 
have  lost  your  labor.  Nevertheless,  we  will  not  forget 
that  some  Egyptian  wheat  was  handed  down  to  us  by  a 
mummy. 

On  the.  whole,  I  think  that  it  cannot  be  maintained 
that  dressing  has  in  this  or  any  country  risen  to  the  dig 
nity  of  an  art.  At  present  men  make  shift  to  wear 
what  they  can  get.  Like  shipwrecked  sailors,  they  put 
on  what  they  can  find  on  the  beach,  and  at  a  little  dis 
tance,  whether  of  space  or  time,  laugh  at  each  other's 
masquerade.  Every  generation  laughs  at  the  old  fash 
ions,  but  follows  religiously  the  new.  We  are  amused 
at  beholding  the  costume  of  Henry  VIII.,  or  Queen 
Elizabeth,  as  much  as  if  it  was  that  of  the  King  and 
Queen  of  the  Cannibal  Islands.  All  costume  off  a  man 
is  pitiful  or  grotesque.  It  is  only  the  serious  eye  peer 
ing  from  and  the  sincere  life  passed  within  it,  which  re 
strain  laughter  and  consecrate  the  costume  of  any  peo 
ple.  Let  Harlequin  be  taken  with  a  fit  of  the  colic  and 


30 


his  trappings  //ill  have  to  serve  that  mood  too.  When 
the  soldier  is  hit  by  a  cannon  ball  rags  are  as  becoming 
as  purple. 

The  childish  and  savage  taste  of  men  and  women  foi 
new  patterns  keeps  how  many  shaking  and  squinting 
through  kaleidoscopes  that  they  may  discover  the  par 
ticular  figure  which  this  generation  requires  to-day. 
The  manufacturers  have  learned  that  this  taste  is  mere 
ly  whimsical.  Of  two  patterns  which  differ  only  by  a 
few  threads  more  or  less  of  a  particular  color,  the  one 
will  be  sold  readily,  the  other  lie  on  the  shelf,  though  it 
frequently  happens  that  after  the  lapse  of  a  season  the 
latter  becomes  the  most  fashionable.  Comparatively, 
tattooing  is  not  the  hideous  custom  which  it  is  called. 
It  is  not  barbarous  merely  because  the  printing  is  skin- 
deep  and  unalterable. 

I  cannot  believe  that  our  factory  system  is  the  best 
mode  by  which  men  may  get  clothing.  The  condition 
of  the  operatives  is  becoming  every  day  more  like  that 
of  the  English ;  and  it  cannot  be  wondered  at,  since,  as 
far  as  I  have  heard  or  observed,  the  principal  object  is, 
not  that  mankind  may  be  well  and  honestly  clad,  but, 
unquestionably,  that  the  corporations  may  be  enriched. 
In  the  long  run  men  hit  only  what  they  aim  at.  There 
fore,  though  they  should  fail  immediately,  they  had  bet 
ter  aim  at  something  high. 


As  for  a  Shelter,  I  will  not  deny  that  this  is  now  a 
necessary  of  life,  though  there  are  instances  of  men 
having  done  without  it  for  long  periods  in  colder  coun 
tries  than  this.  Samuel  Laing  says  that  "  The  Laplander 
in  his  skin  dress,  and  in  a  skin  bag  which  ts  puts  over 


SHELTER.  81 

Ms  head  and  shoulders,  will  sleep  night  after  night  on 
the  snow  in  a  degree  of  cold  which  would  ex 
tinguish  the  life  of  one  exposed  to  it  in  any  woollen 
clothing."  He  had  seen  them  asleep  thus.  Yet  he 
adds,  "  They  are  not  hardier  than  other  people."  But, 
probably,  man  did  not  live  long  on  the  earth  without  dis 
covering  the  convenience  which  there  is  in  a  house,  the 
domestic  comforts,  which  phrase  may  have  originally 
signified  the  satisfactions  of  the  house  more  than  of  the 
family ;  though  these  must  be  extremely  partial  and  oc 
casional  in  those  climates  where  the  house  is  associated 
in  our  thoughts  with  winter  or  the  rainy  season  chiefly, 
and  two  thirds  of  the  year,  except  for  a  parasol,  is  un 
necessary.  In  our  climate,  in  the  summer,  it  was  for 
merly  almost  solely  a  covering  at  night.  In  the  Indian 
gazettes  a  wigwam  was  the  symbol  of  a  day's  march,  and 
a  row  of  them  cut  or  painted  on  the  bark  of  a  tree 
signified  that  so  many  times  they  had  camped.  Man 
was  not  made  so  large  limbed  and  robust  but  that  he 
must  seek  to  narrow  his  world,  and  wall  in  a  space  such 
as  fitted  him.  He  was  at  first  bare  and  out  of  doors ; 
but  though  this  was  pleasant  enough  in  serene  and  warm 
weather,  by  daylight,  the  rainy  season  and  the  winter,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  torrid  sun,  would  perhaps  have 
nipped  his  race  in  the  bud  if  he  had  not  made  haste 
to  clothe  himself  with  the  shelter  of  a  house.  Adam  and 
Eve,  according  to  the  fable,  wore  the  bower  before 
other  clothes.  Man  wanted  a  home,  a  place  of  warmth, 
or  comfort,  first  of  physical  warmth,  then  the  warmth 
of  the  affections. 

We  may  imagine  a  time  when,  in  the  infancy  of  the 
human  race,  some  enterprising  mortal  crept  into  a  hol- 
ionr  ;n  a  rock  for  shelter.  Every  child  begins  the  world 


32  WALDEN. 

again,  to  some  extent,  and  loves  to  stay  out  doors,  even 
in  wet  and  cold.  It  plays  house,  as  well  as  horse,  hav 
ing  an  instinct  for  it.  Who  does  not  remember  the 
interest  with  which  when  young  he  looked  at  shelving 
rocks,  or  any  approach  to  a  cave  ?  It  was  the  natural 
yearning  of  that  portion  of  our  most  primitive  ancestor 
which  still  survived  in  us.  From  the  cave  we  have  ad 
vanced  to  roofs  of  palm  leaves,  of  bark  and  boughs,  of 
linen  woven  and  stretched,  of  grass  and  straw,  of 
boards  and  shingles,  of  stones  and  tiles.  At  last,  we 
know  not  what  it  is  to  live  in  the  open  air,  and  our 
lives  are  domestic  in  more  senses  than  we  think.  From 
the  hearth  to  the  field  is  a  great  distance.  It  would  bo 
well  perhaps  if  we  were  to  spend  more  of  our  days  and 
nights  without  any  obstruction  between  us  and  the 
celestial  bodies,  if  the  poet  did  not  speak  so  much  from 
under  a  roof,  or  the  saint  dwell  there  so  long.  Birds 
do  not  sing  in  caves,  nor  do  doves  cherish  their  inno 
cence  in  dovecots. 

However,  if  one  designs  to  construct  a  dwelling 
house,  it  behooves  him  to  exercise  a  little  Yankee  shrewd 
ness,  lest  after  all  he  find  himself  in  a  workhouse,  a 
labyrinth  without  a  clew,  a  museum,  an  almshouse,  a 
prison,  or  a  splendid  mausoleum  instead.  Consider  first 
how  slight  a  shelter  is  absolutely  necessary.  I  have 
seen  Penobscot  Indians,  in  this  town,  living  in  tents  of 
thin  cotton  cloth,  while  the  snow  was  nearly  a  foot  deep 
around  them,  and  I  thought  that  they  would  be  glad  to 
have  it  deeper  to  keep  out  the  wind.  Formerly,  when 
how  to  get  my  living  honestly,  with  freedom  left  for  my 
proper  pursuits,  was  a  question  which  vexed  me  even 
more  than  it  does  now,  for  unfortunately  I  am  become 
Bomewhat  callous,  1  used  to  see  a  large  box  by  the  rail- 


SHELTER.  33 

road,  six  feet  long  by  three  wide,  in  which  the  laborers 
locked  up  their  tools  at  night,  and  it  suggested  to  mo 
that  every  man  who  was  hard  pushed  might  get  such  a 
one  for  u  dollar,  and,  having  bored  a  few  auger  holes 
in  it,  to  admit  the  air  at  least,  get  into  it  when  it  rained 
and  at  night,  and  hook  down  the  lid,  and  so  have  freedom 
in  his  love,  and  in  his  soul  be  free.  This  did  not  ap 
pear  the  worst,  nor  by  any  means  a  despicable  alterna 
tive.  You  could  sit  up  as  late  as  you  pleased,  and,  when 
ever  you  got  up,  go  abroad  without  any  landlord  or 
house-lord  dogging  you  for  rent.  Many  a  man  is  har 
assed  to  death  to  pay  the  rent  of  a  larger  and  more 
luxurious  box  who  would  not  have  frozen  to  death  in 
such  a  box  as  this.  I  am  far  from  jesting.  Economy 
is  a  subject  which  admits  of  being  treated  with  levity, 
but  it  cannot  so  be  disposed  of.  A  comfortable  house 
for  a  rude  and  hardy  race,  that  lived  mostly  out  of  doors, 
was  once  made  here  almost  entirely  of  such  materials 
as  Nature  furnished  ready  to  their  hands.  Gookin,  who 
was  superintendent  of  the  Indians  subject  to  the  Massa 
chusetts  Colony,  writing  in  1674,  says,  "The  best  of 
their  houses  are  covered  very  neatly,  tight  and  warm, 
with  barks  of  trees,  slipped  from  their  bodies  at  those 
seasons  when  the  sap  is  up,  and  made  into  great  flakes, 
with  pressure  of  weighty  timber,  when  they  are  green. 
. . .  The  meaner  sort  are  covered  with  mats  which  they 
make  of  a  kind  of  bulrush,  and  are  also  indifferently 
tight  and  warm,  but  not  so  good  as  the  former. . . .  Some 
I  have  seen,  sixty  or  a 'hundred  feet  long  and  thirty 
feet  broad. ...  I  have- often  lodgdd  in  their  wigwams,  arid 
found  them  as  warm  as  the  best  English  houses."  He 
adds,  that  they  were  commonly  carpeted  and  lined  with 
in  with  well-wrought  embroidered  mats,  and  were  fur- 
3 


B4  WALDEN. 


with-  various  ulensils.  The  Indians  had  advanced 
so  far  as  to  regulate  the  effect  of  the  wind  by  a  mat 
suspended  over  the  hole  in  the  roof  and  moved  by 
a  string.  Such  a  lodge  was  in  the  first  instance  con 
structed  in  a  day  or  two  at  most,  and  taken  down  and 
put  up  in  a  few  hours  ;  and  every  family  owned  one,  or 
its  apartment  in  one. 

In  the  savage  state  every  family  owns  a  shelter  as 
good  as  the  best,  and  sufficient  for  its  coarser  and  sim 
pler  wants  ;  but  I  think  that  I  speak  within  bounds 
when  I  say  that,  though  the  birds  of  the  air  have  their 
nests,  and  the  foxes  their  holes,  and  the  savages  their 
wigwams,  in  modern  civilized  society  not  more  than  one 
half  the  families  own  a  shelter.  In  the  large  towns  and 
cities,  where  civilization  especially  prevails,  the  number 
of  those  who  own  a  shelter  is  a  very  small  fraction  of 
the  whole.  The  rest  pay  an  annual  tax  for  this  outside 
garment  of  all,  become  indispensable  summer  and  win 
ter,  which  would  buy  a  village  of  Indian  wigwams,  but 
now  helps  to  keep  them  poor  as  long  as  they  live.  I  do 
not  mean  to  insist  here  on  the  disadvantage  of  hiring 
compared  with  owning,  but  it  is  evident  that  the  savage 
owns  his  shelter  because  it  costs  so  little,  while  the  civil 
ized  man  hires  his  commonly  because  he  cannot  afford 
to  own  it  ;  nor  can  he,  in  the  long  run,  any  better  afford 
to  hire.  But,  answers  one,  by  merely  paying  this  tax 
the  poor  civilized  man  secures  an  abode  which  is  a  pal 
ace  compared  with  the  savage's.  An  annual  rent  of 
from  twenty-five  to  a  hundred  dollars,  these  are  the 
country  rates,  entitles  him  to  the  benefit  of  the  improve 
ments  of  centuries,  spacious  apartments,  clean  paint  and 
paper,  Bumford  fireplace,  back  plastering,  Venetian 
blinds,  copper  pump,  spring  lock,  a  commodious  cellar, 


SHELTER.  35 

und  many  other  things.  But  how  happens  it  that  lie 
who  is  said  to  enjoy  these  things  is  so  commonly  a  poor 
civilized  man,  while  the  savage,  who  has  them  not,  is 
rich  as  a  savage  ?  If  it  is  asserted  that  civilization  is  a 
rea;  advance  in  the  condition  of  man,  —  and  I  think 
that  it  is,  though  only  the  wise  improve  their  advan 
tages,  —  it  must  be  shown  that  it  has  produced  better 
dwellings  without  making  them  more  costly;  and  the 
cost  of  a  thing  is  the  amount  of  what- 1  will  call  life 
which  is  required  to  be  exchanged  for  it,  immediately 
or  in  the  long  run.  An  average  house  in  this  neighbor 
hood  costs  perhaps  eight  hundred  dollars,  and  to  lay  up 
this  sum  will  take  from  ten  to  fifteen  years  of  the  labor 
er's  life,  even  if  he  is  not  encumbered  with  a  family  ;  — 
estimating  the  pecuniary  value  of  every  man's  labor  at 
one  dollar  a  day,  for  if  some  receive  more,  others  re 
ceive  less ;  —  so  that  he  must  have  spent  more  than  half 
his  life  commonly  before  his  wigwam  will  be  earned. 
If  we  suppose  him  to  pay  a  rent  instead,  this  is  but  a 
doubtful  choice  of  evils.  Would  the  savage  have  been 
wise  to  exchange  his  wigwam  for  a  palace  on  these 
terms? 

It  may  be  guessed  that  I  reduce  almost  the  whole  ad 
vantage  of  holding  this  superfluous  property  as  a  fund 
in  store  against  the  future,  so  far  as  the  individual  is 
concerned,  mainly  to  the  defraying  of  funeral  expenses. 
But  perhaps  a  man  is  not  required  to  bury  himself.  Nev 
ertheless  this  points  to  an  important  distinction  between 
the  civilized  man  and  the  savage;,  andj  no  doubt,  they 
have  de-signs  on  us  for  our  benefit,  in  making,  the  life  of 
a  civilized  people  an  institution,  in  which  the  life  of  the 
individual  is  to  a  great  extent  absorbed,  in  order  to  pre 
serve  and  perfect  that  of  the  race.  But  I  wish  to  show 


36  WA.LDE.ff. 

at  what  a  sacrifice  this  advantage  is  at  present  obtained, 
and  to  suggest  that  we  may  possibly  &>o  live  as  to  secure 
all  the  advantage  without  suffering  any  of  the  disadvan 
tage.  What  mean  ye  by  saying  that  the  poor  ye  have 
always  with  you,  or  that  the  fathers  have  eaten  sour 
grapes,  and  the  children's  teeth  are  set  on  edge  ? 

"  As  I  live,  saith  the  Lord  God  ye  shall  not  have  oo 
casion  any  more  to  use  this  proverb  in  Israel." 

"  Behold  all  souls  are  mine  ;  as  the  soul  of  the  father, 
so  also  the  soul  of  the  son  is  mine :  the  soul  that  sinneth 
it  shall  die." 

"When  I  consider  my  neighbors,  the  farmers  of  Con 
cord,  who  are  at  least  as  well  off  as  the  other  classes,  I 
find  that  for  the  most  part  they  have  been  toiling  twenty, 
thirty,  or  forty  years,  that  they  may  become  the  real 
owners  of  their  farms,  which  commonly  they  have  in 
herited  with  encumbrances,  or  else  bought  with  hired 
money,  —  and  we  may  regard  one  third  of  that  toil  as 
the  cost  of  their  houses,  —  but  commonly  they  have  not 
paid  for  them  yet.  It  is  true,  the  encumbrances  some 
times  outweigh  the  value  of  the  farm,  so  that  the  farm 
itself  becomes  one  great  encumbrance,  and  still  a  man  is 
found  to  inherit  it,  being  well  acquainted  with  it,  as  he 
says.  On  applying  to  the  assessors,  I  am  surprised  to 
learn  that  they  cannot  at  once  name  a  dozen  in  the 
town  who  own  their  farms  free  and  clear.  If  you  would 
know  the  history  of  these  homesteads,  inquire  at  the 
bank  where  they  are  mortgaged.  The  man  who  has 
actually  paid  for  his  farm  with  labor  on  it  is  so  rare  that 
every  neighbor  can  point  to  him.  I  doubt  if  there  are 
three  such  men  in  Concord.  What  has  been  said  of  the 
merchants,  that  a  very  large  majority,  even  ninety-seven 
in  a  hundred,  are  sure  to  fail,  is  equally  true  of  the 


SHELTER.  37 

farmeis.  With  regard  to  the  merchants,  however,  one 
of  them  says  pertinently  that  a  great  part  of  their 
failures  are  not  genuine  pecuniary  failures,  but  merely 
failures  to  fulfil  their  engagements,  because  it  is  incon 
venient  ;  that  is,  it  is  the  moral  character  that  breaks 
down.  But  this  puts  an  infinitely  worse  face  on  the 
matter,  and  suggests,  beside,  that  probably  not  even  the 
other  three  succeed  in  saving  their  souls,  but  are  per 
chance  bankrupt  in  a  worse  sense  than  they  who  fail  hon 
estly.  Bankruptcy  and  repudiation  are  the  spring-boards 
from  which  much  of  our  civilization  vaults  and  turns  its 
somersets,  but  the  savage  stands  on  the  unelastic  plank 
of  famine.  Yet  the  Middlesex  Cattle  Show  goes  off 
here  with  eclat  annually,  as  if  all  the  joints  of  the  agri 
cultural  machine  were  suent. 

The  farmer  is  endeavoring  to  solve  the  problem  of  a 
livelihood  by  a  formula  more  complicated  than  the  prob 
lem  itself.  To  get  his  shoestrings  he  speculates  in 
herds  of  cattle.  With  consummate  skill  he  has  set  his 
trap  with  a  hair  springe  to  catch  comfort  and  independ 
ence,  and  then,  as  he  turned  away,  got  his  own  leg  into 
it.  This  is  the  reason  he  is  poor ;  and  for  a  similar 
reason  we  are  all  poor  in  respect  to  a  thousand  savage 
comforts,  though  surrounded  by  luxuries.  As  Chapman 
sings,  — 

"  The  false  society  of  men  — 

—  for  earthly  greatness 
All  heavenly  comforts  rarefies  to  air." 

And  when  the  farmer  has  got  his  house,  he  may  not 
be  the  richer  but  the  poorer  for  it,  and  it  be  the  house 
that  has  got  him.     As  I  understand  it,  that  was  a  valid 
objection  urged  by  Momus  against  the  house  which  Mi 
uerva   made,  that  she  "  had  not  m.ulu  it  movable,  by 


8$  WALDEN. 

which  means  a  bad  neighborhood  might  be  avoided ; "  and 
it  may  still  be  urged,  for  our  houses  are  such  unwieldy 
property  that  we  are  often  imprisoned  rather  than  housed 
in  them ;  and  the  bad  neighborhood  to  be  avoided  is  ou* 
own  scurvy  selves.  I  know  one  or  two  families,  at 
least,  in  this  town,  who,  for  nearly  a  generation,  have 
been  wishing  to  sell  their  houses  in  the  outskirts  and 
move  into  the  village,  but  have  not  been  able  to  accom 
plish  it,  and  only  death  will  set  them  free.  • 

Granted  that  the  majority  are  able  at  last  either  to 
own  or  hire  the  modern  house  with  all  its  improvements. 
While  civilization  has  been  improving  our  houses,  it  has 
not  equally  improved  the  men  who  are  to  inhabit  them. 
It  has  created  palaces,  but  it  was  not  so  easy  to  create 
noblemen  and  kings.  And  if  the  civilized  man's  pur 
suits  are  no  worthier  than  the  savage's,  if  he  is  employed 
the  greater  part  of  his  life  in  obtaining  gross  necessaries 
and  comforts  merely,  why  should  he  have  a  better  dwell 
ing  than  the  former  ? 

But  how  do  the  poor  minority  fare?  Perhaps  it 
will  be  found,  that  just  in  proportion  as  some  have 
been  placed  in  outward  circumstances  above  the  savage, 
others  have  been  degraded  below  him.  The  luxury  of 
one  class  is  counterbalanced  by  the  indigence  of  another. 
On  the  one  side  is  the  palace,  on  the  other  are  the  alms- 
house  and  "  silent  poor."  The  myriads  who  built  the 
pyramids  to  be  the  tombs  of  the  Pharaohs  were  fed  on 
garlic,  and  it  may  be  were  not  decently  buried  them 
selves.  The  mason  who  finishes  the  cornice  of  the 
palace  returns  at  night  perchance  to  a  hut  not  so  good 
as  a  wigwam.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that,  in  a  coun 
try  where  the  usual  evidences  of  civilization  exist,  the 
condition  of  a  very  large  body  of  the  inhabitants  may 


SHELTER.  39 

not  be  as  degraded  as  that  of  savages.  I  refer  to  the 
degraded  poor,  not  now  to  the  degraded  rich.  To  know 
this  I  should  not  need  to  look  farther  than  to  the  shan 
ties  which  every  where  border  our  railroads,  that  last  im 
provement  in  civilization ;  where  I  see  in  my  daily 
walks  human  beings  living  in  sties,  and  all  winter  with 
an  open  door,  for  the  sake  of  light,  without  any  visible, 
often  imaginable,  wood  pile,  and  the  forms  of  both  old 
and  young  are  permanently  contracted  by  the  long 
habit  of  shrinking  from  cold  and  misery,  and  the  de 
velopment  of  all  their  limbs  and  faculties  is  checked.  It 
certainly  is  fair  to  look  at  that  class  by  whose  labor  the 
works  which  distinguish  this  generation  are  accom 
plished.  Such  too,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  is  the 
condition  of  the  operatives  of  every  denomination  in 
England,  which  is  the  great  workhouse  of  the  world. 
Or  I  could  refer  you  to  Ireland,  which  is  marked  as  one 
of  the  white  or  enlightened  spots  on  the  map.  Contrast 
the  physical  condition  of  the  Irish  with  that  of  the 
North  American  Indian,  or  the  South  Sea  Islander,  or 
any  other  savage  race  before  it  was  degraded  by  contact 
with  the  civilized  man.  Yet  I  have  no  doubt  that  that 
people's  rulers  are  as  wise  as  the  average  of  civilized 
rulers.  Their  condition  only  proves  what  squalidness 
may  consist  with  civilization.  I  hardly  need  refer  now 
to  the  laborers  in  our  Southern  States  who  produce 
the  staple  exports  of  this  country,  and  are  themselves 
a  staple  production  of  the  South.  But  to  confine  my 
self  to  those  who  are  said  to  be  in  moderate  circum 
stances. 

Most  men  appear  never  to  have  considered  what  a 
house  is,  and  are  actually  though  needlessly  poor  all 
their  lives  because  they  think  that  they  must  have  such 


40  WALDEN. 

a  one  as  their  neighbors  have.  As  if  one  were  to  wear 
any  sort  of  coat  which  the  tailor  might  cut  out  for  him, 
or,  gradually  leaving  off  palmleaf  hat  or  cap  of  wood- 
chuck  skin,  complain  of  hard  times  because  he  could 
not  afford  to  buy  him  a  crown !  It  is  possible  to  invent 
a  house  still  more  convenient  and  luxurious  than  we 
have,  which  yet  all  would  admit  that  man  could  not  af 
ford  to  pay  for.  Shall  we  always  study  to  obtain  more 
of  these  things,  and  not  sometimes  to  be  content  with 
less  ?  Shall  the  respectable  citizen  thus  gravely  teach, 
by  precept  and  example,  the  necessity  of  the  young 
man's  providing  a  certain  number  of  superfluous  glow- 
shoes,  and  umbrellas,  and  empty  guest  chambers  for 
empty  guests,  before  he  dies?  Why  should  not  our 
furniture  be  as  simple  as  the  Arab's  or  the  Indian's  ? 
When  I  think  of  the  benefactors  of  the  race,  whom  we 
have  apotheosized  as  messengers  from  heaven,  bearers 
of  divine  gifts  to  man,  I  do  not  see  in  my  mind  any  reti 
nue  at  their  heels,  any  car-load  of  fashionable  furniture. 
Or  what  if  I  were  to  allow  —  would  it  not  be  a  singu 
lar  allowance  ?  —  that  our  furniture  should  be  more 
complex  than  the  Arab's,  in  proportion  as  we  are  moral 
ly  and  intellectually  his  s'?Deriors !  At  present  our 
houses  are  cluttered  and  uenled  with  it,  and  a  good  house 
wife  would  sweep  out  the  greater  part  into  the  dust  hole, 
and  not  leave  her  morning's  work  undone.  Morning 
work !  By  the  blushes  of  Aurora  and  the  music  of 
Memnon,  what  should  be  man's  morning  work  in  this 
world  ?  I  had  three  pieces  of  limestone  on  my  desk, 
but  I  was  terrified  to  find  that  they  required  to  be  dusted 
daily,  when  the  furniture  of  my  mind  was  all  undusted 
Btill,  and  I  threw  them  out  the  window  in  disgust. 
How,  then,  could  I  have  a  furnished  house?  J 


SHELTER.  41 

rather  sit  in  the  open  air,  for  no  dust  gathers  on  the 
grass,  unless  where  man  has  broken  ground. 

Tt  is  the  luxurious  and  dissipated  who  set  the  fashions 
which  the  herd  so  diligently  follow.  The  traveller  who 
stops  at  the  best  houses,  so  called,  soon  discovers  this, 
for  the  publicans  presume  him  to  be  a  Sardanapalus, 
and  if  he  resigned  himself  to  their  tender  mercies  he 
would  soon  be  completely  emasculated.  I  think  that  in 
the  railroad  car  we  are  inclined  to  spend  more  on  lux 
ury  than  on  safety  and  convenience,  and  it  threatens 
without  attaining  these  to  become  no  better  than  a 
modern  drawing  room,  with  its  divans,  and  ottomans, 
and  sunshades,  and  a  hundred  other  oriental  things, 
which  we  are  taking  west  with  us,  invented  for  the  la 
dies  of  the  harem  and  the  effeminate  natives  of  the 
Celestial  Empire,  which  Jonathan  should  be  ashamed  to 
know  the  names  of.  I  would  rather  sit  on  a  pumpKin 
and  have  it  all  to  myself,  than  be  crowded  on  a  velvet 
cushion.  I  would  rather  ride  on  earth  in  an  ox  cart 
with  a  free  circulation,  than  go  to  heaven  in  the  fancy 
car  of  an  excursion  train  and  breathe  a  malaria  all 
the  way. 

The  very  simplicity  and  nakedness  of  man's  life  in 
the  primitive  ages  imply  this  advantage  at  least,  that 
they  left  him  still  but  a  sojourner  in  nature.  When  he 
was  refreshed  with  food  and  sleep  he  contemplated  his 
journey  again.  He  dwelt,  as  it  were,  in  a  tent  in  this 
world,  and  was  either  threading  the  valleys,  or  crossing 
the  plains,  or  climbing  the  mountain  tops.  But  L>J 
men  have  become  the  tools  of  their  tools.  The  man 
who  independently  plucked  the  fruits  when  he  was  hun 
gry  is  become  a  farmer ;  and  he  who  stood  under  a  tree 
for  shelter,  a  housekeeper.  We  now  no  longer  camp  aa 


12  WALDEN. 

for  a  night,  but  have  settled  down  on  earth  and  forgot 
ten  heaven.  We  have  adopted  Christianity  merely  as 
an  improved  method  of  agri-culture.  We  have  built 
for  this  world  a  family  mansion,  and  for  the  next  a  fami 
ly  tomb.  The  best  works  of  art  are  the  expression  of 
man's  struggle  to  free  himself  from  this  condition,  but 
the  effect  of  our  art  is  merely  to  make  this  low  state 
comfortable  and  that  higher  state  to  be  forgotten.  There 
is  actually  no  place  in  this  village  for  a  work  of  fine  art, 
if  any  had  come  down  to  us,  to  stand,  for  our  lives,  our 
houses  and  streets,  furnish  no  proper  pedestal  for  it. 
There  is  not  a  nail  to  hang  a  picture  on,  nor  a  shelf  to 
receive  the  bust  of  a  hero  or  a  saint.  When  I  consider 
how  our  houses  are  built  and  paid  for,  or  not  paid  for,  and 
their  internal  economy  managed  and  sustained,  I  wonder 
that  the  floor  does  not  give  way  under  the  visitor  while 
he  is  admiring  the  gewgaws  upon  the  mantel-piece,  and 
let  him  through  into  the  cellar,  to  some  solid  and  honest 
though  earthy  foundation.  I  cannot  but  perceive  that  this 
so  called  rich  and  refined  life  is  a  thing  jumped  at,  and  I 
do  not  get  on  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  fine  arts  which 
adorn  it,  my  attention  being  wholly  occupied  with  the 
jump;  for  I  remember  that  the  greatest  genuine  lea>>, 
due  to  human  muscles  alone,  on  record,  is  that  of  certai-i 
wandering  Arabs,  who  are  said  to  have  cleared  twenty- 
five  feet  on  level  ground.  Without  factitious  support. 
man  is  sure  to  come  to  earth  again  beyond  that  distance. 
The  first  question  which  I  am  tempted  to  put  to  the 
proprietor  of  such  great  impropriety  is,  Who  bolsters 
you  ?  Are  you  one  of  the  ninety-seven  who  fail,  or 
the  three  who  succeed  ?  Answer  me  these  questions, 
and  then  perhaps  I  may  look  at  your  bawbles  and  find 
them  ornamental.  The  cart  before  the  horse  is  neithei 


SHE  .TER.  43 

beautiful  nor  useful.  Before  we  can  adorn  our  houses 
with  beautiful  objects  the  walls  must  be  stripped,  and  our 
lives  must  be  stripped,  and  beautiful  housekeeping  and 
beautiful  living  be  laid  for  a  foundation :  now,  a  taste 
for  the  beautiful  is  most  cultivated  out  of  doors,  where 
there  is  no  house  and  no  housekeeper. 

Old  Johnson,  in  his  "  Wonder- Working  Providence," 
speaking  of  the  first  settlers  of  this  town,  with  whom  he 
was  contemporary,  tells  us  that "  they  burrow  themselves 
in  the  earth  for  their  first  shelter  under  some  hillside,  and, 
casting  the  soil  aloft  upon  timber,  they  make  a  smoky 
fire  against  the  earth,  at  the  highest  side."  They  did 
not  "  provide  them  houses/'  says  he,  "  till  the  earth,  by 
the  Lord's  blessing,  brought  forth  bread  to  feed  them," 
and  the  first  year's  crop  was  so  light  that  "  they  were 
forced  to  cut  their  bread  very  thin  for  a  long  season." 
The  secretary  of  the  Province  of  New  Netberland, 
writing  in  Dutch,  in  1 650,  for  the  information  of  those 
who  wished  to  take  up  land  there,  states  more  particu 
larly,  that  "  those  in  New  Netherland,  and  especially  in 
New  England,  who  have  no  means  to  build  farm  houses 
at  first  according  to  their  wishes,  dig  a  square  pit  in  the 
ground,  cellar  fashion,  six  or  seven  feet  deep,  as  long  and 
as  broad  as  they  think  proper,  case  the  earth  inside  with 
wood  all  round  the  wall,  and  line  the  wood  with  the  bark 
of  trees  or  something  else  to  prevent  the  caving  in  of  the 
earth;  floor  this  cellar  with  plank,  and  wainscot  it 
overhead  for  a  ceiling,  raise  a  roof  of  spars  clear  up, 
arid  cover  the  spars  with  bark  or  green  sods,  so  that 
they  can  live  dry  and  warm  in  these  houses  with  their 
entire  families  for  two,  three,  and  four  years,  it  being 
understood  that  partitions  are  run  through  those  cellars 
which  are  adapted  to  the  size  of  the  family.  The 


44  WALDEN. 

wealthy  and  principal  men  in  New  England,  in  the  be 
ginning  of  the  colonies,  commenced  their  first  dwelling 
houses  in  this  fashion  for  two  reasons ;  firstly,  in  order 
not  to  waste  time  in  building,  and  not  to  want  food  the 
next  season ;  secondly,  in  order  not  to  discourage  poor 
laboring  people  whom  they  brought  over  in  numbers  from 
Fatherland.  In  the  course  of  three  or  four  years,  when 
the  country  became  adapted  to  agriculture,  they  built 
themselves  handsome  houses,  spending  on  them  several 
thousands*" 

In  this  course  which  our  ancestors  took  there  was  a 
show  of  prudence  at  least,  as  if  their  principle  were  to 
satisfy  the  more  pressing  wanfs  first.  But  are  the  more 
pressing  wants  satisfied  now  ?  When  I  think  of  acquir 
ing  for  myself  one  of  our  luxurious  dwellings,  I  am  de 
terred,  for,  so  to  speak,  the  country  is  not  yet  adapted 
to  human  culture,  and  we  are  still  forced  to  cut  our 
spiritual  bread  far  thinner  than  our  forefathers  did  their 
wheaten.  Not  that  all  architectural  ornament  is  to 
be  neglected  even  in  the  rudest  periods ;  but  let  our 
houses  first  be  lined  with  beauty,  where  they  come  in 
contact  with  our  lives,  like  the  tenement  of  the  shell 
fish,  and  not  overlaid  with  it.  But,  alas !  I  have  been 
inside  one  or  two  of  them,  and  know  what  they  are 
lined  with. 

Though  we  are  not  so  degenerate  but  that  we  might 
possibly  live  in  a  cave  or  a  wigwam  or  wear  skins  to 
day,  it  certainly  is  better  to  accept  the  advantages, 
though  so  dearly  bought,  which  the  invention  and  indus 
try  of  mankind  offer.  In  such  a  neighborhood  as  this, 
boards  and  shingles,  lime  and  bricks,  are  cheaper  and 
more  easily  obtained  than  suitable  caves,  or  whole  logs, 
or  bark  in  sufficient  quantities,  or  even  well-tempered 


BUILDING    THE    HOUSE.  45 

clay  or  flat  stones.  I  speak  understandinglj  on  this 
subject,  for  1  have  made  myself  acquainted  with  it  both 
theoretically  and  practically.  With  a  little  more  wit 
we  might  use  these  materials  so  as  to  become  richer 
than  the  richest  now  are,  and  make  our  civilization  a 
blessing.  The  civilized  man  is  a  more  experienced 
and  wiser  savage.  But  to  make  haste  to  my  own  ex 
periment. 


Near  the  end  of  March,  1845,  I  borrowed  an  axe 
and  went  down  to  the  woods  by  Walden  Pond,  nearest 
to  where  I  intended  to  build  my  house,  and  began  to  cut 
down  some  tall  arrowy  white  pines,  still  in  their  youth, 
for  timber.  It  is  difficult  to  begin  without  borrowing, 
but  perhaps  it  is  the  most  generous  course  thus  to  per 
mit  your  fellow-men  to  have  an  interest  in  your  enter 
prise.  The  owner  of  the  axe,  as  he  released  his  hold 
on  it,  said  that  it  was  the  apple  of  his  eye ;  but  I  returned 
it  sharper  than  I  received  it.  It  was  a  pleasant  hillside 
where  I  worked,  covered  with  pine  woods,  through 
which  I  looked  out  on  the  pond,  and  a  small  open  field 
in  the  woods  where  pines  and  hickories  were  springing 
up.  The  ice  in  the  pond  was  not  yet  dissolved,  though 
there  were  some  open  spaces,  and  it  was  all  dark  colored 
and  saturated  with  water.  There  were  some  slight  flur 
ries  of  snow  during  the  days  that  I  worked  there ;  but 
for  the  most  part  when  I  came  out  on  to  the  railroad,  on 
my  way  home,  its  yellow  sand  heap  stretched  away 
gleaming  in  the  hazy  atmosphere,  and  the  rails  shone  in 
the  spring  sun,  and  I  heard  the  lark  and  pewee  and 
other  birds  already  come  to  commence  another  year 
with  us.  They  were  pleasant  spring  days,  in  which  the 


46  WALDEN. 

winter  of  man's  discontent  was  thawing  as  well  as  the 
earth,  and  the  life  that  had  lain  torpid  began  to  stretch 
itself.  One  day,  when  my  axe  had  come  off  and  I  had 
cut  a  green  hickory  for  a  wedge,  driving  it  with  a  stone, 
and  had  placed  the  whole  to  soak  in  a  pond  hole  in 
order  to  swell  the  wood,  I  saw  a  striped  snake  run  into 
the  water,  and  he  lay  on  the  bottom,  apparently  without 
inconvenience,  as  long  as  I  staid  there,  or  more  than  a 
quarter  of  an  hour;  perhaps  because  he  had  not  yet 
fairly  come  out  of  the  torpid  state.  It  appeared  to  me 
that  for  a  like  reason  men  remain  in  their  present  low 
and  primitive  condition ;  but  if  they  should  feel  the  in 
fluence  of  the  spring  of  springs  arousing  them,  they 
would  of  necessity  rise  to  a  higher  and  more  ethereal  life. 
I  had  previously  seen  the  snakes  in  frosty  mornings  in 
my  path  with  portions  of  their  bodies  stih1  numb  and  in 
flexible,  waiting  for  the  sun  to  thaw  them.  On  the  1st  of 
April  it  rained  and  melted  the  ice,  and  in  the  early  part 
of  the  day,  which  was  very  foggy,  I  heard  a  stray  goose 
groping  about  over  the  pond  and  cackling  as  if  lost,  or 
like  the  spirit  of  the  fog. 

So  I  went  on  for  some  days  cutting  and  hewing  tim 
ber,  and  also  studs  and  rafters,  all  with  my  narrow  axe, 
not  having  many  communicable  or  scholar-like  thoughts, 
singing  to  myself,  — 

Men  say  they  know  many  things  ; 

But  lo  !  they  have  taken  wings,  — 

The  arts  and  sciences, 

And  a  thousand  appliances  ; 

The  wind  that  blows 

Is  all  that  any  body  knows. 

1  hewed  the  main  timbers  six  inches  square,  most  of  the 
studs  on  frvvc  sides  only,  and  the  rafters  and  floor  tira- 


BUILDING    THE    HOUSE.  47 

bers  on  one  side,  leaving  the  rest  of  the  bark  on,  so  that 
they  were  just  as  straight  and  much  stronger  than  sawed 
ones.  Each  stick  was  carefully  mortised  or  tenoned  by 
its  stump,  for  I  had  borrowed  other  tools  by  this  time, 
My  days  in  the  woods  were  not  very  long  ones ;  yet  I 
usually  carried  my  dinner  of  bread  and  butter,  and 
read  the  newspaper  in  which  it  was  wrapped,  at  noon, 
sitting  amid  the  green  pine  boughs  which  I  had  cut  off, 
and  to  my  bread  was  imparted  some  of  their  fragrance, 
for  my  hands  were  covered  with  a  thick  coat  of  pitch. 
Before  I  had  done  I  was  more  the  friend  than  the  foe 
of  the  pine  tree,  though  I  had  cut  down  some  of  them, 
having  become  better  acquainted  with  it.  Sometimes 
a  rambler  in  the  wood  was  attracted  by  the  sound  of  my 
axe,  and  we  chatted  pleasantly  over  the  chips  which  I 
had  made. 

By  the  middle  of  April,  for  I  made  no  haste  in  my 
work,  but  rather  made  the  most  of  it,  my  house  was 
framed  and  ready  for  the  raising.  I  had  already  bought 
the  shanty  of  James  Collins,  an  Irishman  who  worked  on 
the  Fitchburg  Railroad,  for  boards.  James  Collins' 
shanty  was  considered  an  uncommonly  fine  one.  When 
I  called  to  see  it  he  was  not  at  home.  I  walked  about 
the  outside,  at  first  unobserved  from  within,  the  window 
was  so  deep  and  high.  It  was  of  small  dimensions,  with 
a  peaked  cottage  roof,  and  not  much  else  to  be  seen,  the 
dirt  being  raised  five  feet  all  around  as  if  it  were  a 
compost  heap.  The  roof  was  the  soundest  part,  though 
a  good  deal  warped  and  made  brittle  by  the  sun.  Door- 
sill  there  was  none,  but  a  perennial  passage  for  the 
hens  under  the  door  board.  Mrs.  C.  came  to  the  door 
and  asked  me  to  view  it  from  the  inside.  The  hens 
were  driven  in  by  my  approach.  It  was  dark,  and  had 


48  WALDEN. 

a  dirt  floor  for  the  most  part,  dank,  clammy,  and  aguish, 
only  here  a  board  and  there  a  board  which  would  not 
bear  removal.  She  lighted  a  lamp  to  show  me  the  in 
side  of  the  roof  and  the  walls,  and  also  that  the  board  floor 
extended  under  the  bed,  warning  me  not  to  step  into 
the  cellar,  a  sort  of  dust  hole  two  feet  deep.  In  her 
own  words,  they  were  "good  boards  overhead,  good 
boards  all  around,  and  a  good  window,"  —  of  two  whole 
squares  originally,  only  the  cat  had  passed  out  that  way 
lately.  There  was  a  stove,  a  bed,  and  a  place  to  sit,  an 
infant  in  the  house  where  it  was  born,  a  silk  parasol, 
gilt-framed  looking-glass,  and  a  patent  new  coffee  mill 
nailed  to  an  oak  sapling,  all  told.  The  bargain  was 
soon  concluded,  for  James  had  in  the  mean  while  re 
turned.  I  to  pay  four  dollars  and  twenty-five  cents  to 
night,  he  to  vacate  at  five  to-morrow  morning,  selling  to 
nobody  else  meanwhile  :  I  to  take  possession  at  six. 
It  were  well,  he  said,  to  be  there  early,  and  anticipate 
certain  indistinct  but  wholly  unjust  claims  on  the  score 
of  ground  rent  and  fuel.  This  he  assured  me  was  the 
only  encumbrance.  At  six  I  passed  him  and  his  family 
on  the  road.  One  large  bundle  held  their  all,  —  bed, 
coffee-mill,  looking-glass,  hens,  —  all  but  the  cat,  she 
took  to  the  woods  and  became  a  wild  cat,  and,  as  1 
learned  afterward,  trod  in  a  trap  set  for  woodchucks, 
and  so  became  a  dead  cat  at  last. 

I  took  down  this  dwelling  the  same  morning,  drawing 
the  nails,  and  removed  it  to  the  pond  side  by  small  cart 
loads,  spreading  the  boards  on  the  grass  there  to  bleach 
and  warp  back  again  in  the  sun.  One  early  thrush 
gave  me  a  note  or  two  as  I  drove  along  the  woodland 
path.  I  was  informed  treacherously  by  a  young  Patrick 
that  neighbor  Seeley,  an  Irishman,  in  the  intervals  of 


BUILDING    THE    HOUSE.  49 

the  carting,  transferred  the  still  tolerable,  straight,  and 
drivable  nails,  staples,  and  spikes  to  his  pocket,  and  then 
Btood  when  I  came  back  to  pass  the  time  of  day,  and 
look  freshly  up,  unconcerned,  with  spring  thoughts,  at 
the  devastation ;  there  being  a  dearth  of  work,  as  he 
said.  He  was  there  to  represent  spectatordora,  and 
help  make  this  seemingly  insignificant  event  one  with 
the  removal  of  the  gods  of  Troy. 

I  dug  my  cellar  in  the  side  of  a  hill  sloping  to  the 
sou  rh,  where  a  woodchuck  had  formerly  dug  his  burrow, 
down  through  sumach  and  blackberry  roots,  and  the 
lowest  stain  of  vegetation,  six  feet  square  by  seven 
deep,  to  a  fine  sand  where  potatoes  would  not  freeze  in 
any  winter.  The  sides  were  left  shelving,  and  not 
stoned;  but  the  sun  having  never  shone  on  them,  the 
sand  still  keeps  its  place.  It  was  but  two  hours'  work. 
I  took  particular  pleasure  in  this  breaking  of  ground, 
for  in  almost  all  latitudes  men  dig  into  the  earth  for  an 
equable  temperature.  Under  the  most  splendid  house 
in  the  city  is  still  to  be  found  the  cellar  where  they  store 
their  roots  as  of  old,  and  long  after  the  superstructure 
has  disappeared  posterity  remark  its  dent  in  the  earth. 
The  house  is  still  but  a  sort  of  porch  at  the  entrance  of 
a  burrow. 

At  length,  in  the  beginning  of  May,  with  the  help 
of  some  of  my  acquaintances,  rather  to  improve  so 
good  an  occasion  for  neighborliness  than  from  any 
necessity,  I  set  up  the  frame  of  my  house.  No  man 
was  ever  more  honored  in  the  character  of  his  raisers 
than  I.  They  are  destined,  I  trust,  to  assist  at  the  rais 
ing  of  loftier  structures  one  day.  I  began  to  occupy 
my  house  on  the  4th  of  July,  as  soon  as  it  was  boarded 
and  roofed,  for  the  boards  were  carefully  feather-edged 
4 


50  WALDEN. 

and  lapped,  so  that  it  was  perfectly  impervious  to  rain 
but  before  boarding  I  laid  the  foundation  of  a  chimney 
at  one  and,  bringing  two  cartloads  of  stones  up  the 
hill  from  the  pond  in  my  arms.  I  built  the  chimney 
after  my  hoeing  in  the  fall,  before  a  tire  became  neces 
sary  for  warmth,  doing  my  cooking  in  the  mean  while  out 
of  doors  on  the  ground,  early  in  the  morning :  whioh 
mode  I  still  think  is  in  some  respects  more  convenient 
and  agreeable  than  the  usual  one.  When  it  stormed 
before  my  bread  was  baked,  I  fixed  a  few  boards  over 
the  fire,  and  sat  under  them  to  watch  my  loaf,  and  passed 
some  pleasant  hours  in  that  way.  In  those  days,  when 
my  hands  were  much  employed,  I  read  but  little,  but 
the  least  scraps  of  paper  which  lay  on  the  ground,  my 
holder,  or  tablecloth,  afforded  me  as  much  entertain 
ment,  in  fact  answered  the  same  purpose  as  the  Iliad. 


It  would  be  worth  the  while  to  build  still  more  de 
liberately  than  I  did,  considering,  for  instance,  what 
foundation  a  door,  a  window,  a  cellar,  a  garret,  have  in 
the  nature  of  man,  and  perchance  never  raising  any 
superstructure  until  we  found  a  better  reason  for  it  than 
our  temporal  necessities  even.  There  is  some  of  the 
same  fitness  in  a  man's  building  his  own  house  that 
there  is  in  a  bird's  building  its  own  nest.  Who  knows 
but  if  men  constructed  their  dwellings  with  their  own 
hands,  and  provided  food  for  themselves  and  families 
simply  and  honestly  enough,  the  poetic  faculty  would 
be  universally  developed,  as  birds  universally  sing 
when  they  are  so  engaged?  But  alas!  we  do  like 
cowbirds  and  cuckoos,  which  lay  their  eggs  in  nesta 
which  other  birds  have  built,  and  cheer  no  traveller 


ARCHITECTURE.  51 

with  their  chattering  and  unmusical  notes.  Shall  we 
forever  resign  the  pleasure  of  construction  to  the  car 
penter?  What  does  architecture  amount  to  in  the 
experience  of  the  mass  of  men?  I  never  in  all  my 
walks  came  across  a  man  engaged  in  so  simple  and 
natural  an  occupation  as  building  his  house.  "We  belong 
to  the  community.  It  is  not  the  tailor  alone  who  is  th^ 
ninth  part  of  a  man ;  it  is  as  much  the  preacher,  and 
the  merchant,  and  the  farmer.  Where  is  this  division 
of  labor  to  end  ?  and  what  object  does  it  finally  serve  ? 
No  doubt  another  may  also  think  for  me ;  but  it  is  not 
therefore  desirable  that  he  should  do  so  to  the  exclusion 
of  my  thinking  for  myself. 

True,  there  are  architects  so  called  in  this  country, 
and  I  have  heard  of  one  a1  least  possessed  with  the  idea 
of  making  architectural  ornaments  have  a  core  of  truth, 
a  necessity,  and  hence  a  beauty,  as  if  it  were  a  revela 
tion  to  him.  All  very  well  perhaps  from  his  point  of 
view,  but  only  a  little  better  than  the  common  dilettan 
tism.  A  sentimental  reformer  in  architecture,  he  be 
gan  at  the  cornice,  not  at  the  foundation.  It  was  only 
how  to  put  a  core  of  truth  within  the  ornaments,  that 
every  sugar  plum  in  fact  might  have  an  almond  or  car 
away  seed  in  it,  —  though  I  hold  that  alrnonds  are  most 
wholesome  without  the  sugar, — and  not  how  the  inhabit 
ant,  the  indweller,  might  build  truly  within  and  without, 
and  let  the  ornaments  take  care  of  themselves.  What 
reasonable  man  ever  supposed  that  ornaments  were 
something  outward  and  in  the  skin  merely,  —  that  the 
tortoise  got  his  spotted  shell,  or  the  shellfish  its  mother- 
o'-pearl  tints,  by  such  a  contract  as  the  inhabitants  of 
Broadway  their  Trinity  Church?  But  a  man  has  no 
more  to  do  with  the  style  of  architecture  of  his  house 


52  WALDEN. 

than  a  tortoise  with  that  of  its  shell :  nor  need  the 
soldier  be  so  idle  as  to  try  to  paint  the  precise  color  of 
his  virtue  on  his  standard.  The  enemy  will  find  it  out. 
He  may  turn  pale  when  the  trial  comes.  This  man 
seemed  to  me  to  lean  over  the  cornice,  and  timidly 
whisper  his  half  truth  to  the  rude  occupants  who  really 
kn  >w  it  better  than  he.  What  of  architectural  beauty 
I  now  see,  I  know  has  gradually  grown  from  within 
outward,  out  of  the  necessities  and  character  of  the  in- 
dweller,  who  is  the  only  builder,  —  out  of  some  un 
conscious  truthfulness,  and  nobleness,  without  ever  a 
thought  for  the  appearance ;  and  whatever  additional 
beauty  of  this  kind  is  destined  to  be  produced  will  be 
preceded  by  a  like  unconscious  beauty  of  life.  The 
most  interesting  dwellings  in  this  country,  as  the  painter 
knows,  are  the  most  unpretending,  humble  log  huts  and 
cottages  of  the  poor  commonly ;  it  is  the  life  of  the  in 
habitants  whose  shells  they  are,  and  not  any  peculiar 
ity  in  their  surfaces  merely,  which  makes  them  pic 
turesque;  and  equally  interesting  will  be  the  citizen's 
suburban  box,  when  his  life  shall  be  as  simple  and 
as  agreeable  to  the  imagination,  and  there  is  as  lit 
tle  straining  after  effect  in  the  style  of  his  dwelling.  A 
great  proportion  of  architectural  ornaments  are  literally 
hollow,  and  a  September  gale  would  strip  them  off,  like 
borrowed  plumes,  without  injury  to  the  substantials. 
They  can  do  without  architecture  who  have  no  olives 
nor  wines  in  the  cellar.  What  if  an  equal  ado  were 
made  about  the  ornaments  of  style  in  literature,  and  the 
architects  of  our  bibles  spent  as  much  time  about  their 
cornices  as  the  architects  of  our  churches  do  ?  So  are 
made  the  belles-lettres  and  the  beaux-arts  and  their  pro 
fessors.  Much  it  concerns  a  man,  forsooth,  how  a  few 


ARCHITECTURE.  53 

sticks  are  slanted  over  him  or  under  him,  and  what  colors 
are  daubed  upon  his  box.  It  would  signify  somewhat, 
if,  in  any  earnest  sense,  he  slanted  them  and  daubed  it ; 
but  the  spirit  having  departed  out  of  the  tenant,  it  is  of 
a  piece  with  constructing  his  own  coffin,  —  the  archi 
tecture  of  the  grave,  and  "  carpenter,"  is  but  another 
name  for  "coffin-maker."  One  man  says,  in  his  despair 
or  indifference  to  life,  take  up  a  handful  of  the  earth  at 
your  feet,  and  paint  your  house  that  color.  Is  he  think 
ing  of  his  last  and  narrow  house  ?  Toss  up  a  copper  for 
it  as  well.  What  an  abundance  of  leisure  he  must  have  ! 
Why  do  you  take  up  a  handful  of  dirt  ?  Better  paint 
your  house  your  own  complexion;  let  it  turn  pale  or 
blush  for  you.  An  enterprise  to  improve  the  style  of 
cottage  architecture!  When  you  have  got  my  orna 
ments  ready  I  will  wear  them. 

Before  winter  I  built  a  chimney,  and  shingled  the  sides 
of  my  house,  which  were  already  impervious  to  rain,  with 
imperfect  and  sappy  shingles  made  of  the  first  slice  of 
the  log,  whose  edges  I  was  obliged  to  straighten  with  a 
plane. 

I  have  thus  a  tight  shingled  and  plastered  house,  ten 
feet  wide  by  fifteen  long,  and  eight-feet  posts,  with  a  gar 
ret  and  a  closet,  a  large  window  on  each  side,  two  trap 
doors,  one  door  at  the  end,  and  a  brick  fireplace  oppo 
site.  The  exact  cost  of  my  house,  paying  the  usual 
price  for  such  materials  as  I  used,  but  not  counting  the 
work,  all  of  which  was  done  by  myself,  was  as  follows ; 
and  I  give  the  details  because  very  few  are  able  to  tell 
exactly  what  their  houses  cost,  and  fewer  still,  if  any, 
the  separate  cost  of  the  various  materials  which  com 
pose  them :  — 


54  WALDEN. 


Boards, $8  03£,  mostly  shanty  boards. 

Refuse  shinf  es  f<?r  roof  and  sides,      .      4  00 

Laths .     1  25 

Two  second-hand  windows  with  glass,    2  43 

One  thousand  old  brick,     .        .        .        4  00 

Two  casks  of  lime,        .       .       .       .    2  40    That  was  high. 

Hair,    ....  0  31    More  than  I  needed. 

Mantle-tree  iron, 0  15 

Nails, 3  90 

Hinges  and  screws,  .       .        .    0  14 

Latch,  .  ...       0  10 

Chalk,    .       .  .       .    0  01 

carried  a  good  part  en  raj 

back. 


Transportation.          .       .       .       .        1  40  I 
In  all $28 


These  are  all  the  materials  excepting  the  timber, 
tfones  and  sand,  which  I  claimed  by  squatter's  right. 
JL  have  also  a  small  wood-shed  adjoining,  made 
chiefly  of  the  stuff  which  was  left  after  building  the 
nouse. 

I  intend  to  build  me  a  house  which  will  surpass  any 
on  the  main  street  in  Concord  in  grandeur  and  luxury, 
AS  soon  as  it  pleases  me  as  much  and  will  cost  me 
no  more  than  my  present  one. 

I  thus  found  that  the  student  who  wishes  for  a  shelter 
can  obtain  one  for  a  lifetime  at  an  expense  not  greater 
than  the  rent  which  he  now  pays  annually.  If  I  seem 
to  boast  more  than  is  becoming,  my  excuse  is  that  I 
brag  for  humanity  rather  than  for  myself;  and  my  short 
comings  and  inconsistencies  do  not  affect  the  truth  of 
my  statement.  Notwithstanding  much  cant  and  hy 
pocrisy,  —  chaff  which  I  find  it  difficult  to  separate 
from  my  wheat,  but  for  which  I  am  as  sorry  as  any 
man,  —  I  will  breathe  freely  and  stretch  myself  hi  this 
respect,  it  is  such  a  relief  to  both  the  moral  and  phys« 


ECONOMY.  55 

ical  system ;  and  I  am  resolved  that  1  will  not  through 
humility  become  the  devil's  attorney.  I  will  endeavor 
to  speak  a  good  word  for  the  truth.  At  Cambridge 
College  the  mere  rent  of  a  student's  room,  which  is  only 
a  little  larger  than  my  own,  is  thirty  dollars  each  year, 
though  the  corporation  had  the  advantage  of  building 
thirty-two  side  by  side  and  under  one  roof,  and  the  oc 
cupant  suffers  the  inconvenience  of  many  and  noisy 
neighbors,  and  perhaps  a  residence  in  the  fourth  story 
1  cannot  but  think  that  if  we  had  more  true  wisdom  in 
these  respects,  not  only  less  education  would  be  needed, 
because,  forsooth,  more  would  already  have  been  ac 
quired,  but  the  pecuniary  expense  of  getting  an  educa 
tion  would  in  a  great  measure  vanish.  Those  con 
veniences  which  the  student  requires  at  Cambridge  or 
elsewhere  cost  him  or  somebody  else  ten  times  as  great 
a  sacrifice  of  life  as  they  would  with  proper  management 
on  both  sides.  Those  things  for  which  the  most  money 
is  demanded  are  never  the  things  which  the  student 
most  wants.  Tuition,  for  instance,  is  an  important  item 
in  the  term  bill,  while  for  the  far  more  valuable  educa 
tion  which  he  gets  by  associating  with  the  most  culti 
vated  of  his  contemporaries  no  charge  is  made.  The 
mode  of  founding  a  college  is,  commonly,  to  get  up  a  sub 
scription  of  dollars  and  cents,  and  then  following  blindly 
the  principles  of  a  division  of  labor  to  its  extreme,  a 
principle  which  should  never  be  followed  but  with  cir 
cumspection, —  to  call  in  a  contractor  who  makes  this  a 
subject  of  speculation,  and  he  employs  Irishmen  or 
other  operatives  actually  to  lay  the  foundations,  while 
the  students  that  are  to  be  are  said  to  be  fitting  them 
selves  for  it ;  and  for  these  oversights  successive  gener- 
itions  have  to  pay.  I  think  that  it  would  be  better  than 


56  WALDEN. 

this,  for  the  students,  or  those  who  desire  to  be  bene 
fited  by  it,  even  to  lay  the  foundation  themselves.  The 
student  who  secures  his  coveted  leisure  and  retirement 
by  systematically  shirking  any  labor  necessary  to  man 
obtains  but  an  ignoble  and  unprofitable  leisure,  defraud 
ing  himself  of  the  experience  which  alone  can  make  leis 
ure  fruitful.  "But,"  says  one,  "you  do  not  mean  that 
the  students  should  go  to  work  with  their  hands  instead 
of  their  heads  ?  "  I  do  not  mean  that  exactly,  bufc  I  mean 
something  which  he  might  think  a  good  deal  like  that ;  I 
mean  that  they  should  not  play  life,  or  study  it  merely, 
while  the  community  supports  them  at  this  expensive 
game,  but  earnestly  live  it  from  beginning  to  end.  How 
could  youths  better  learn  to  live  than  by  at  once  trying 
the  experiment  of  living?  Methinks  this  would  exer 
cise  their  minds  as  much  as  mathematics.  If  I  wished 
a  boy  to  know  something  about  the  arts  and  sciences,, 
for  instance,  I  would  not  pursue  the  common  course, 
which  is  merely  to  send  him  into  the  neighborhood  of 
some  professor,  where  any  thing  is  professed  and  prac 
tised  but  the  art  of  life ;  —  to  survey  the  world  through  r. 
telescope  or  a  microscope,  and  never  with  his  nati?r?\ 
eye ;  to  study  chemistry,  and  not  learn  how  his  bread  is 
made,  or  mechanics,  and  not  learn  how  it  is  earned ;  to 
discover  new  satellites  to  Neptune,  and  not  detect  the 
motes  in  his  eyes,  or  to  what  vagabond  he  is  a  satellite 
himself;  or  to  be  devoured  by  the  monsters  that  swarm 
all  around  him,  while  contemplating  the  monsters  in  a 
drop  of  vinegar.  Which  would  have  advanced  the 
most  at  the  end  of  a  month,  —  the  boy  who  had  made 
his  own  jackknife  from  the  ore  which  he  had  dug  and 
smelted,  reading  as  much  as  would  be  necessary  for  this, 
—  or  the  boy  who  had  attended  the  lectures  on  metallurgy 


ECONOMY.  57 

at  the  Institute  in  the  mean  while,  and  had  received  a 
Rogers'  penknife  from  his  father?  Which  would  be 
most  likely  to  cut  his  fingers  ?  .  .  .  To  my  astonishment 
I  was  informed  on  leaving  college  that  I  had  studied 
navigation !  —  why,  if  I  had  taken  one  turn  down  the 
harbor  I  should  have  known  more  about  it.  Even  the 
poor  student  studies  and  is  taught  only  political  econo 
my,  while  that  economy  of  living  which  is  synonymous 
with  philosoj  Ly  is  not  even  sincerely  professed  in  our 
colleges.  The  consequence  is,  that  while  he  is  reading 
Adam  Smith,  Ricardo,  and  Say,  he  runs  his  father  in 
debt  irretrievably. 

As  with  our  colleges,  so  with  a  hundred  "  modern  im 
provements  ; "  there  is  an  illusion  about  them ;  there  ia 
not  always  a  positive  advance.  The  devil  goes  on  ex 
acting  compound  interest  to  the  last  for  his  early  share 
and  numerous  succeeding  investments  in  them.  Our 
inventions  are  wont  to  be  pretty  toys,  which  distract  our 
attention  from  serious  things.  They  are  but  improved 
means  to  an  unimproved  end,  an  end  which  it  was  already 
but  too  easy  to  arrive  at ;  as  railroads  lead  to  Boston 
or  New  York.  We  are  in  great  haste  to  construct  a 
magnetic  telegraph  from  Maine  to  Texas ;  but  Maine 
and  Texas,  it  may  be,  have  nothing  important  to  com 
municate.  Either  is  in  such  a  predicament  as  the  man 
who  was  earnest  to  be  introduced  to  a  distinguished 
deaf  woman,  but  when  he  was  presented,  and  one  end  of 
her  ear  trumpet  was  put  into  his  hand,  had  nothing  to 
say.  As  if  the  main  object  were  to  talk  fast  and  not  to 
talk  sensibly.  We  are  eager  to  tunnel  under  the  At 
lantic  and  bring  the  old  world  some  weeks  nearer  to 
the  new;  but  perchance  the  first  news  that  will  leak 
through  into  the  broad,  flapping  American  ear  will  be 


58  WALDEJS. 

that  the  Princess  Adelaide  has  the  whooping  cough. 
After  all,  the  man  whose  horse  trots  a  mile  in  a  minute 
does  not  carry  the  most  important  messages ;  he  is  not 
an  evangelist,  nor  does  he  come  round  eating  locusts 
and  wild  honey.  I  doubt  if  Flying  Childers  ever  car 
ried  a  peck  of  corn  to  mill. 

One  says  to  me,  "  I  wonder  that  you  do  not  lay  up 
money;  you  love  to  travel;  you  might  take  the  cars 
and  go  to  Fitchburg  to-day  and  see  the  country."  But 
I  am  wiser  than  that.  I  have  learned  that  the  swift 
est  traveller  is  he  that  goes  afoot.  I  say  to  my 
friend,  Suppose  we  try  who  will  get  there  first.  The 
distance  is  thirty  miles  ;  the  fare  ninety  cents.  That 
is  almost  a  day's  wages.  I  remember  when  wages 
were  sixty  cents  a  day  for  laborers  on  this  very  road. 
Well,  I  start  now  on  foot,  and  get  there  before  night ; 
I  have  travelled  at  that  rate  by  the  week  together. 
You  will  in  the  mean  while  have  earned  your  fare,  and 
arrive  there  some  time  to-morrow,  or  possibly  this 
evening,  if  you  are  lucky  enough  to  get  a  job  in  season. 
Instead  of  going  to  Fitchburg,  you  will  be  working 
here  the  greater  part  of  the  day.  And  so,  if  the  rail 
road  reached  round  the  world,  I  think  that  I  should 
keep  ahead  of  you  ;  and  as  for  seeing  the  country  and 
getting  experience  of  that  kind,  I  should  have  to  cut 
your  acquaintance  altogethei*. 

Such  is  the  universal  law,  which  no  man  can  ever 
outwit,  and  with  regard  to  the  railroad  even  we  may 
say  it  is  as  broad  as  it  is  long.  To  make  a  railroad 
round  the  world  available  to  all  mankind  is  equivalent 
to  grading  the  whole  surface  of  the  planet.  Men  have 
an  indistinct  notion  that  if  they  keep  up  this  activity  of 
joint  stocks  and  spades  long  enough  all  will  at  length 


ECONOMY.  59 

ride  somewhere,  in  next  to  no  time,  and  for  nothing; 
but  though  a  crowd  rushes  to  the  depot,  and  the  conduct 
or  shouts  "  All  aboard ! "  when  the  smoke  is  blown  away 
and  the  vapor  condensed,  it  will  be  perceived  that  a  few 
are  riding,  but  the  rest  are  run  over,  —  and  it  will 
be  called,  and  will  be,  "  A  melancholy  accident."  No 
doubt  they  can  ride  at  last  who  shall  have  earned 
their  fare,  that  is,  if  they  survive  so  long,  but  they  will 
probably  have  lost  their  elasticity  and  desire  to  travel 
by  that  time.  This  spending  of  the  best  part  of  one's  life 
earning  money  in  order  to  enjoy  a  questionable  liberty 
during  the  least  valuable  part  of  it,  reminds  me  of  the 
Englishman  who  went  to  India  to  make  a  fortune  first, 
in  order  that  he  might  return  to  England  and  live  the 
life  of  a  poet.  He  should  have  gone  up  garret  at  once. 
"  What ! "  exclaim  a  million  Irishmen  starting  up  from 
all  the  shanties  in  the  land,  "is  not  this  railroad 
which  we  have  built  a  good  thing  ?  "  Yes,  I  answer, 
comparatively  good,  that  is,  you  might  have  done  worse ; 
but  I  wish,  as  you  are  brothers  of  mine,  that  you  could 
have  spent  your  time  better  than  digging  in  this  dirt. 


Before  I  finished  my  house,  wishing  to  earn  ten  or 
twelve  dollars  by  some  honest  and  agreeable  method,  in 
order  to  meet  my  unusual  expenses,  I  planted  about  two 
acres  and  a  half  of  light  and  sandy  soil  near  it  chiefly 
with  beans,  but  also  a  small  part  with  potatoes,  corn, 
peas,  and  turnips.  The  whole  lot  contains  eleven  acres> 
mostly  growing  up  to  pines  and  hickories,  and  was  sold 
the  preceding  season  for  eight  dollars  and  eight  cents 
an  acre.  One  farmer  said  that  it  was  "  good  for  nothing 
but  to  raise  cheeping  squirrels  on."  I  put  no  manure 


60  WALDEN. 

whatever  on  this  land,  not  being  the  owner,  but  merely 
a  squatter,  and  not  expecting  to  cultivate  so  much 
again,  and  I  did  not  quite  hoe  it  all  once.  I  got  out 
several  cords  of  stumps  in  ploughing,  which  supplied  me 
with  fuel  for  a  long  time,  and  left  small  circles  of  virgin 
mould,  easily  distinguishable  through  the  summer  by  the 
greater  luxuriance  of  the  beans  there.  The  dead  and 
for  the  most  part  unmerchantable  wood  behind  my  house, 
and  the  driftwood  from  the  pond,  have  supplied  the  re 
mainder  of  my  fuel.  I  was  obliged  to  hire  a  team  and  a 
man  for  the  ploughing,  though  I  held  the  plough  myself. 
My  farm  outgoes  for  the  first  season  were,  for  imple 
ments,  seed,  work,  &c.,  $14  72J.  The  seed  corn  was 
given  me.  This  never  costs  any  thing  to  speak  of,  unless 
you  plant  more  than  enough.  I  got  twelve  bushels  of 
beans,  and  eighteen  bushels  of  potatoes,  beside  some 
peas  and  sweet  corn.  The  yellow  corn  and  turnips 
were  too  late  to  come  to  any  thing.  My  whole  income 
from  the  farm  was 

$23  44. 
Deducting  the  outgoes,     .       .        .       .        14  721 

.  There  are  left, $8  71|, 

beside  produce  consumed  and  on  hand  at  the  time  this 
estimate  was  made  of  the  value  of  $4  50,  —  the  amount 
on  hand  much  more  than  balancing  a  little  grass  which 
I  did  not  raise.  All  things  considered,  that  is,  con 
sidering  the  importance  of  a  man's  soul  and  of  to-day, 
notwithstanding  the  short  time  occupied  by  my  experi 
ment,  nay,  partly  even  because  of  its  transient  character, 
I  believe  that  that  was  doing  better  than  any  farmer  in 
Concord  did  that  year. 

The  next  year  I  did  better  still,  for  I  spaded  up  all 
the  land  which  I  required,  about  a  third  of  an  acre,  and 


ECONOMY.  61 

I  learned  from  the  experience  of  both  years,  not  being 
in  the  least  awed  by  many  celebrated  works  on  hus 
bandry,  Arthur  Young  among  the  rest,  that  if  one  would 
live  simply  and  eat  only  the  crop  which  he  raised,  and 
raise  no  more  than  he  ate,  and  not  exchange  it  for  an 
insufficient  quantity  of  more  luxurious  and  expensive 
things,  he  would  need  to  cultivate  only  a  few  rods  of 
ground,  and  that  it  would  be  cheaper  to  spade  up  that 
than  to  use  oxen  to  plough  it,  and  to  select  a  fresh  spot 
from  time  to  time  than  to  manure  the  old,  and  he  could 
do  all  his  necessary  farm  work  as  it  were  with  his  left 
hand  at  odd  hours  in  the  summer;  and  thus  he  would 
not  be  tied  to  an  ox,  or  horse,  or  cow,  or  pig,  as  at 
present.  I  desire  to  speak  impartially  on  this  point, 
and  as  one  not  interested  in  the  success  or  failure  of  the 
present  economical  and  social  arrangements.  I  was  more 
independent  than  any  farmer  in  Concord,  for  I  was  not 
anchored  to  a  house  or  farm,  but  could  follow  the  bent 
of  my  genius,  which  is  a  very  crooked  one,  every  mo 
ment.  Beside  being  better  off  than  they  already,  if  my 
house  had  been  burned  or  my  crops  had  failed,  I  should 
have  been  nearly  as  well  off  as  before. 

I  am  wont  to  think  that  men  are  not  so  much  the 
keepers  of  herds  as  herds  are  the  keepers  of  men,  the 
former  are  so  much  the  freer.  Men  and  oxen  exchange 
work ;  but  if  we  consider  necessary  work  only,  the  oxen 
will  be  seen  to  have  greatly  the  advantage,  their  farm  is 
so  much  the  larger.  Man  does  some  of  his  part  of  the 
exchange  work  in  his  six  weeks  of  haying,  and  it  is  no 
boy's  play.  Certainly  no  nation  that  lived  simply  in  all 
respects,  that  is,  no  nation  of  philosophers,  would  com 
mit  so  great  a  blunder  as  to  use  t'xj  labor  of  animals. 
True,  there  never  was  and  is  not  likely  soon  to  be  a 


32  WALDEN. 

nation  of  philosophers,  nor  am  I  certain  it  is  desirable  that 
there  should  be.  However,  /should  never  have  broken 
a  horse  or  bull  and  taken  him  to  board  for  any  work  he 
might  do  for  me,  for  fear  I  should  become  a  horse-man 
or  a  herds-man  merely ;  and  if  society  seems  to  be  the 
gainer  by  so  doing,  are  we  certain  that  what  is  one 
man's  gain  is  not  another's  loss,  and  that  the  stable-boy 
has  equal  cause  with  his  master  to  be  satisfied?  Granted 
that  some  public  works  would  not  have  been  constructed 
without  this  aid,  and  let  man  share  the  glory  of  such 
with  the  ox  and  horse ;  does  it  follow  that  he  could 
not  have  accomplished  works  yet  more  worthy  of  him 
self  in  that  case  ?  When  men  begin  to  do,  not  merely 
unnecessary  or  artistic,  but  luxurious  and  idle  work,  with 
vheir  assistance,  it  is  inevitable  that  a  few  do  all  the  ex 
change  work  with  the  oxen,  or,  in  other  words,  become 
the  slaves  of  the  strongest.  Man  thus  not  only  works  for 
the  animal  within  him,  but,  for  a  symbol  of  this,  he  works 
for  the  animal  without  him.  Though  we  have  many 
substantial  houses  of  brick  or  stone,  the  prosperity  of 
the  farmer  is  still  measured  by  the  degree  to  which  the 
barn  overshadows  the  house.  This  town  is  said  to  have 
the  largest  houses  for  oxen,  cows,  and  horses  hereabouts, 
and  it  is  not •  behindhand  in  its  public  buildings;  but 
there  are  very  few  halls  for  free  worship  or  free  speech 
in  this  county.  It  should  not  be  by  their  architecture, 
but  why  not  even  by  their  power  of  abstract  thought,  that 
nations  should  seek  to  commemorate  themselves  ?  How 
much  more  admirable  the  Bhagvat-Geeta  than  all  the 
ruins  of  the  East !  Towers  and  temples  are  the  luxury 
of  princes.  A  simple  and  independent  mind  does  not 
toil  at  the  bidding  of  any  prince.  Genius  is  not  a  rn- 
tainei'  to  any  emperor,  nor  is  its  material  silver,  or  gold, 


ARCHITECTURE.  63 

or  marble,  except  to  a  trifling  extent.  To  what  end,  pray, 
is  so  much  stone  hammered  ?  In  Arcadia,  when  I  was 
there,  I  did  not  see  any  hammering  stone.  Nations  are 
possessed  with  an  insane  ambition  to  perpetuate  the 
memory  of  themselves  by  the  amount  of  hammered 
stone  they  leave.  What  if  equal  pains  were  taken  to 
smooth  and  polish  their  manners  ?  One  piece  of  good 
sense  would  be  more  memorable  than  a  monument  as 
high  as  the  moon.  I  love  better  to  see  stones  in  place. 
The  grandeur  of  Thebes  was  a  vulgar  grandeur.  More 
sensible  is  a  rod  of  stone  wall  that  bounds  an  honest 
man's  field  than  a  hundred-gated  Thebes  that  has  wan 
dered  farther  from  the  true  end  of  life.  The  religion 
and  civilization  which  are  barbaric  and  heathenish  build 
splendid  temples ;  but  what  you  might  call  Christianity 
does  not.  Most  of  the  stone  a  nation  hammers  goes  to 
ward  its  tomb  only.  It  buries  itself  alive.  As  for  the 
Pyramids,  there  is  nothing  to  wonder  at  in  them  so 
much  as  the  fact  that  so  many  men  could  be  found  de 
graded  enough  to  spend  their  lives  constructing  a  tomb 
for  some  ambitious  booby,  whom  it  would  have  been 
wiser  and  manlier  to  have  drowned  in  the  Nile,  and  then 
given  his  body  to  the  dogs.  I  might  possibly  invent 
some  excuse  for  them  and  him,  but  I  have  no  time  for 
it.  As  for  the  religion  and  love  of  art  of  the  builders, 
it  is  much  the  same  all  the  world  over,  whether  the 
building  be  an  Egyptian  temple  or  the  United  States 
Bank.  It  costs  more  than  it  comes  to.  The  mainspring 
is  vanity,  assisted  by  the  love  of  garlic  and  bread  and 
butter.  Mr.  Balcom,  a  promising  young  architect,  de 
signs  it  on  the  back  of  his  Vitruvius,  with  hard  pencil 
and  ruler,  and  the  job  is  let  out  to  Dobson  &  Sons, 
stonecutters.  When  the  thirty  centuries  begin  to  iook 


64  WALDEX. 

down  on  it,  mankind  begin  to  look  up  at  it.  As  for 
your  high  towers  and  monuments,  there  was  a  crazy  fel 
low  once  in  this  town  who  undertook  to  dig  through  to 
China,  and  he  got  so  far  that,  as  he  said,  he  heard  the 
Chinese  pots  and  kettles  rattle ;  but  I  think  that  I  shall 
not  go  out  of  my  way  to  admire  the  hole  which  he  made. 
Many  are  concerned  about  the  monuments  of  the 
West  and  the  East,  —  to  know  who  built  them.  For 
my  part,  I  should  like  to  know  who  in  those  days  did 
not  build  them,  —  who  were  above  such  trifling.  But  to 
pi'oceed  with  my  statistics. 

By  surveying,  carpentry,  and  day-labor  of  various 
other  kinds  in  the  village  in  the  mean  while,  for  I  have 
as  many  trades  as  lingers,  I  had  earned  $13  34.  The 
expense  of  food  for  eight  months,  namely,  from  July  4th 
to  March  1st,  the  time  when  these  estimates  were  made, 
though  I  lived  there  more  than  two  years,  —  not  count 
ing  potatoes,  a  little  green  corn,  and  some  peas,  which  I 
had  raised,  nor  considering  the  value  of  what  was  on 
hand  at  the  last  date,  was 


Rice,  .       . 

$1  73| 

Molasses,     . 

1  73 

Cheapest  form  of  the  saccharine. 

Rye  meal, 

1  04J 

Indian  meal, 

0  99| 

Cheaper  than  rye. 

Pork,     . 

0  22 

Flour,  . 

0  88 

>    Costs  more  than  Indian  meal,  ' 
>       both  money  and  trouble. 

> 

Sugar,      . 

0  80 

ta 

Lard,    . 

0  65 

® 

Apples,     . 

0  25 

.  -L  B 

Dried  apple, 

022 

p.  | 

Sweet  potatoes, 

0  10 

< 

One  pumpkin, 

0    6 

tf 
o- 

One  watermelon 

,  0    2 

5" 

Salt,    . 

.  0    3 

Yes,  I  did  eat  $8  74,  all  told ;  but  I  should  not  thus 


ECONOMY.  65 

unblushingly  publish  my  guilt,  if  I  did  not  know  that 
most  of  my  readers  were  equally  guilty  with  myself,  and 
that  their  deeds  would  look  no  better  in  print.  The 
next  year  I  sometimes  caught  a  mess  of  fish  for  my 
dinner,  and  once  I  went  so  far  as  to  slaughter  a  wood- 
chuck  which  ravaged  my  bean-field, — effect  his  transmi 
gration,  as  a  Tartar  would  say, —  and  devour  him,  part 
ly  for  experiment's  sake;  but  though  it  afforded  me  a 
momentary  enjoyment,  notwithstanding  a  musky  flavor, 
I  saw  that  the  longest  use  would  not  make  that  a  good 
practice,  however  it  might  seem  to  have  your  wood- 
chucks  ready  dressed  by  the  village  butcher. 

Clothing  and  some  incidental  expenses  within  the 
same  dates,  though  little  can  be  inferred  from  this 
item,  amounted  to 

$840| 
Oil  and  some  household  utensils,      .       .        .      2  00 


So  that  all  the  pecuniary  outgoes,  excepting  for  wash 
ing  and  mending,  which  for  the  most  part  were  done  out 
of  the  house,  and  their  bills  have  not  yet  been  received, 
—  and  these  are  all  and  more  than  all  the  ways  by 
which  money  necessarily  goes  out  in  this  part  of  the 
world,  —  were 


House, $28  12J 

Farm  one  year, 14  72£ 

Food  eight  months,        .                .        •        .  8  74 

Clothing,  &c.,  eight  months,    .        •       .       .  8  40| 

Oil,  &c.,  eight  months,         ....  2  00 

In  all, $61  99| 


I  address  myself  now  to  those  of  my  readers  who  have 
5 


CO  WALDEN. 

a  living  to  get.     And  to  meet  this  I  have  for  farm 
produce  sold 

$23  44 
Earned  by  day-labor, 13  34 

In  all $36  78, 


which  subtracted  from  the  sum  of  the  outgoes  leaves  a 
balance  of  $25  21f  on  the  one  side,  —  this  being  very 
nearly  the  means  with  which  I  started,  and  the  meas 
ure  of  expenses  to  be  incurred,  —  and  on  the  other, 
beside  the  leisure  and  independence  and  health  thus 
secured,  a  comfortable  house  for  me  as  long  as  I  choose 
to  occupy  it. 

These  statistics,  however  accidental  and  therefore 
uninstructive  they  may  appear,  as  they  have  a  certain 
completeness,  have  a  certain  value  also.  Nothing  was 
given  me  of  which  I  have  not  rendered  some  account. 
It  appears  from  the  above  estimate,  that  my  food  alone 
cost  me  in  money  about  twenty-seven  cents  a  week.  It 
was,  for  nearly  two  years  after  this,  rye  and  Indian 
meal  without  yeast,  potatoes,  rice,  a  very  little  salt  pork, 
molasses,  and  salt,  and  my  drink  water.  It  was  fit  that 
I  should  live  on  rice,  mainly,  who  loved  so  well  the 
philosophy  of  India.  To  meet  the  objections  of  some 
inveterate  cavillers,  I  may  as  well  state,  that  if  I  dined 
out  occasionally,  as  I  always  had  done,  and  I  trust  shall 
have  opportunities  to  do  again,  it  was  frequently  to  the 
detriment  of  my  domestic  arrangements.  But  the  din 
ing  out,  being,  as  I  have  stated,  a  constant  element, 
does  not  in  the  least  affect  a  comparative  statement  like 
this. 

I  learned  from  my  two  years'  experience  that  it  would 
sos*  incredibly  little  trouble  to  obtain  one's  necessary  food, 


BREAD.  67 

even  in  thij  latitude ;  that  a  man  may  use  as  simple  a  diet 
as  the  animals,  and  yet  retain  health  and  strength.  I 
have  made  a  satisfactory  dinner,  satisfactory  on  several 
accounts,  simply  off  a  dish  of  purslane  (Portulaca  olera- 
cea)  which  I  gathered  in  my  cornfield,  boiled  and  salted. 
1  give  the  Latin  on  account  of  the  savoriness  of  the 
trivial  name.  And  pray  what  more  can  a  reasonable 
man  desire,  in  peaceful  times,  in  ordinary  noons,  than  a 
sufficient  number  of  ears  of  green  sweet-corn  boiled, 
with  the  addition  of  salt  ?  Even  the  little  variety  which 
I  used  was  a  yielding  to  the  demands  of  appetite,  and 
not  of  health.  Yet  men  have  come  to  such  a  pass  that 
they  frequently  starve,  not  for  want  of  necessaries,  but 
for  want  of  luxuries ;  and  I  know  a  good  woman  who 
thinks  that  her  son  lost  hi*  life  because  he  took  to  drink 
ing  water  only. 

The  reader  will  pm^ejTc  that  I  am  treating  the  sub 
ject  rather  from  an  economic  than  a  dietetic  point  of 
view,  and  he  will  not  venture  to  put  my  abstemiousness 
to  the  test  unless  he  has  a-  well-stocked  larder. 

Bread  I  at  first  made  of  pure  Indian  meal  and  salt, 
genuine  hoe-cakes,  which  I  baked  before  my  fire  out  of 
doors  on  a  shingle  or  the  end  of  a  stick  of  timber  sawed 
off  in  building  my  house;  but  it  was  wont  to  get  smoked 
and  to  have  a  piny  n*a\or.  I  tried  flour  also ;  but  have 
at  last  found  a  nrixture  of  rye  and  Indian  meal  most 
convenient  and  agreeable.  In  cold  weather  it  was  no 
little  amusement  to  bake  several  small  loaves  of  this  in 
succession,  tending  and  turning  them  as  carefully  as  an 
Egyptian  his  hatching  eggs.  They  were  a  real  cereal 
fruit  which  I  ripened,  and  they  had  to  my  senses  a 
fragrance  like  that  of  other  noble  fruits,  which  I  kept  in 
as  long  as  possible  by  wrapping  them  in  cloths.  I  made 


68  AALDEN. 

a  study  of  the  ancient  and  indispensable  art  of  bread- 
making,  consulting  such  authorities  as  offered,  going 
back  to  the  primitive  days  and  first  invention  of  the  un 
leavened  kind,  when  from  the  wildness  of  nuts  and 
meats  men  first  reached  the  mildness  and  refinement  of 
this  diet,  and  travelling  gradually  down  in  my  studies 
through  that  accidental  souring  of  the  dough  which,  it 
is  supposed,  taught  the  leavening  process,  and  through 
the  various  fermentations  thereafter,  till  I  came  to  "good, 
sweet,  wholesome  bread,"  the  staff  of  life.  Leaven, 
which  some  deem  the  soul  of  bread,  the  spiritus  which 
fills  its  cellular  tissue,  which  is  religiously  preserved 
like  the  vestal  fire,  —  some  precious  bottle-full,  I  sup 
pose,  first  brought  over  in  the  Mayflower,  did  the  bus 
iness  for  America,  and  its  influence  is  still  rising,  swell 
ing,  spreading,  in  cerealian  billows  over  the  land,  — 
this  seed  I  regularly  and  faithfully  procured  from  the 
village,  till  at  length  one  morning  I  forgot  the  rules, 
and  scalded  my  yeast ;  by  which  accident  I  discovered 
that  even  this  was  not  indispensable,  —  for  my  discov 
eries  were  not  by  the  synthetic  but  analytic  process,  — 
and  I  have  gladly  omitted  it  since,  though  most  house 
wives  earnestly  assured  me  that  safe  and  wholesome 
bread  without  yeast  might  not  be,  and  elderly  people 
prophssied  a  speedy  decay  of  the  vital  forces.  Yet  I 
find  it  no'1;  to  be  an  essential  ingredient,  and  after  going 
without  it  for  a  year  am  still  in  the  land  of  the  living ; 
and  I  am  glad  to  escape  the  trivialness  of  carrying  a 
bottle-full  in  my  pocket,  which  would  sometimes  pop  and 
discharge  its  contents  to  my  discomfiture.  It  is  simpler 
and  more  respectable  to  omit  it.  Man  is  an  animal 
who  more  than  any  other  can  adapt  himself  to  all  cli 
mates  and  circumstances.  Neither  did  I  put  any  sal 


BREAD.  69 

soda,  01  other  acid  or  alkali,  into  my  bread.  It  would 
seem  that  I  made  it  according  to  the  recipe  which 
Marcus  Porcius  Cato  gave  about  two  centuries  before* 
Christ.  "  Panem  depsticium  sic  facito.  Manus  morta- 
riumque  bene  lavato.  Farinam  in  mortarium  indito, 
aquas  paulatim  addito,  subigitoque  pulchre.  Ubi  bene 
subegeris,  defingito,  coquitoque  sub  testu."  Which  I 
take  to  mean — "  Make  kneaded  bread  thus.  Wash  your 
hands  and  trough  well.  Put  the  meal  into  the  trough, 
add  water  gradually,  and  knead  it  thoroughly.  When 
you  have  kneaded  it  well,  mould  it,  and  bake  it  under  a 
cover,"  that  is,  in  a  baking-kettle.  Not  a  word  about 
leaven.  But  I  did  not  always  use  this  staff  of  life.  At 
one  time,  owing  to  the  emptiness  of  my  purse,  I  saw 
none  of  it  for  more  than  a  month. 

Every  New  Englander  might  easily  raise  all  his 
own  breadstuffs  in  this  land  of  rye  and  Indian  corn,  and 
not  depend  on  distant  and  fluctuating  markets  for 
them.  Yet  so  far  are  we  from  simplicity  and  inde 
pendence  that,  in  Concord,  fresh  and  sweet  meal  is 
rarely  sold  in  the  shops,  and  hominy  and  corn  in  a  still 
coarser  form  are  hardly  used  by  any.  For  the  most 
part  the  farmer  gives  to  his  cattle  and  hogs  the  grain  of 
his  own  producing,  and  buys  flour,  which  is  at  least  no 
more  wholesome,  at  a  greater  cost,  at  the  store.  I  saw 
that  I  could  easily  raise  my  bushel  or  two  of  rye  and 
Indian  corn,  for  the  former  will  grow  on  the  poorest 
land,  (ind  the  latter  does  not  require  the  best,  and 
grind  them  in  a  hand-mill,  and  so  do  without  rice  and 
pork  ;  and  if  I  must  have  some  concentrated  sweet,  I 
found  by  experiment  that  I  could  make  a  very  good 
molasses  either  of  pumpkins  or  beets,  and  I  knew  that 
I  needed  only  to  set  out  a  few  maples  to  obtain  it  more 


70  WALDEN. 

easily  still,  and  while  these  were  growing  I  could  use 
various  substitutes  beside  those  which  I  have  named. 
"  For,"  as  the  Forefathers  sang,  — 


"  we  can  make  liquor  to  sweeten  our  lips 
Of  pumpkins  and  parsnips  and  walnut-tree  chips." 


Finally,  as  for  salt,  that  grossest  of  groceries,  to  obtain 
this  might  be  a  fit  occasion  for  a  visit  to  the  seashore,  or, 
if  I  did  without  it  altogether,  I  should  probably  drink 
the  less  water.  I  do  not  learn  that  the  Indians  ever 
troubled  themselves  to  go  after  it. 

Thus  I  could  avoid  all  trade  and  barter,  so  far  as 
my  food  was  concerned,  and  having  a  shelter  already, 
it  would  only  remain  to  get  clothing  and  fuel.  The 
pantaloons  which  I  now  wear  were  woven  in  a  farmer's 
family,  —  thank  Heaven  there  is  so  much  virtue  still  in 
man ;  for  I  think  the  fall  from  the  farmer  to  the  oper 
ative  as  great  and  memorable  as  that  from  the  man  to 
the  farmer ;  —  and  in  a  new  country  fuel  is  an  encum 
brance.  As  for  a  habitat,  if  I  were  not  permitted 
still  to  squat,  I  might  purchase  one  acre  at  the  same  price 
for  which  the  land  I  cultivated  was  sold  —  namely, 
eight  dollars  and  eight  cents.  But  as  it  was,  I  con 
sidered  that  I  enhanced  the  value  of  the  land  by  squat 
ting  on  it. 

There  is  a  certain  class  of  unbelievers  who  sometimes 
ask  me  such  questions  as,  if  I  think  that  I  can  live  on 
vegetable  food  alone ;  and  to  strike  at  the  root  of  the 
matter  at  once,  —  for  the  root  is  faith,  —  I  am  accus 
tomed  to  answer  such,  that  I  can  live  on  board  nails.  If 
they  cannot  understand  that,  they  cannot  understand 
much  that  I  have  to  say.  For  my  part,  I  am  glad  to 


FURNITURE.  71 

hear  of  experiments  of  this  kind  being  tried ;  as  that  a 
young  man  tried  for  a  fortnight  to  live  on  hard,  raw  corn 
on  the  ear,  using  his  teeth  for  all  mortar.  The  squirrel 
tribe  tried  the  same  and  succeeded.  The  human  race 
is  inteiested  in  these  experiments,  though  a  few  old  wo 
men  who  are  incapacitated  for  them,  or  who  own  their 
thirds  in  mills,  may  be  alarmed. 


My  furniture,  part  of  which  I  made  myself,  and  the 
rest  cost  me  nothing  of  which  I  have  not  rendered  an 
account,  consisted  of  a  bed,  a  table,  a  desk,  three  chairs, 
a  looking-glass  three  inches  in  diameter,  a  pair  of  tongs 
and  andirons,  a  kettle,  a  skillet,  and  a  frying-pan,  a  dip 
per,  a  wash-bowl,  two  knives  and  forks,  three  plates,  one 
cup,  one  spoon,  a  jug  for  oil,  a  jug  for  molasses,  and  a  ja 
panned  lamp.  None  is  so  poor  that  he  need  sit  on  a 
pumpkin.  That  is  shiftlessness.  There  is  a  plenty  of 
such  chairs  as  I  like  best  in  the  village  garrets  to  be  had 
for  taking  them  away.  Furniture !  Thank  God,  I  can  sit 
and  I  can  stand  without  the  aid  of  a  furniture  warehouse. 
What  man  but  a  philosopher  would  not  be  ashamed  to  see 
his  furniture  packed  in  a  cart  and  going  up  country  ex 
posed  to  the  light  of  heaven  and  the  eyes  of  men,  a 
beggarly  account  of  empty  boxes  ?  That  is  Spaulding's 
furniture.  I  could  never  tell  from  inspecting  such  a 
load  whether  it  belonged  to  a  so  called  rich  man  or  a 
poor  one ;  the  owner  always  seemed  poverty-stricken. 
Indeed,  the  more  you  have  of  such  things  the  poorer 
you  are.  Each  load  looks  as  if  it  contained  the  con 
tents  of  a  dozen  shanties ;  and  if  one  shanty  is  poor,  this 
is  a  dozen  times  as  poor.  Pray,  for  what  do  we  move 
ever  but  to  get  rid  of  our  furniture,  our  exuvice ;  at  last 


72  WALDEN. 

to  go  from  this  world  to  another  newly  furnished,  and 
leave  this  to  be  burned  ?  It  is  the  same  as  if  all  these 
traps  were  buckled  to  a  man's  belt,  and  he  could  not  move 
over  the  rough  country  where  our  lines  are  cast  without 
dragging  them,  —  dragging  his  trap.  He  was  a  lucky 
fox  that  left  his  tail  in  the  trap.  The  muskrat  will 
gna?f  his  third  leg  off  to  be  free.  No  wonder  man 
has  lost  his  elasticity.  How  often  he  is  at  a  dead  set  I 
"  Sir,  if  I  may  be  so  bold,  what  do  you  mean  by  a 
dead  set  ? "  If  you  are  a  seer,  whenever  you  meet 
a  man  you  will  see  all  that  he  owns,  ay,  and  much 
that  he  pretends  to  disown,  behind  him,  even  to  his 
kitchen  furniture  and  all  the  trumpery  which  he  saves 
and  will  not  burn,  and  he  will  appear  to  be  harnessed  to 
it  and  making  what  headway  he  can.  I  think  that  the 
man  is  at  a  dead  set  who  has  got  through  a  knot  hole 
or  gateway  where  his  sledge  load  of  furniture  cannot 
follow  him.  I  cannot  but  feel  compassion  when  I  hear 
some  trig,  compact-looking  man,  seemingly  free,  all  girded 
and  ready,  speak  of  his  "  furniture,"  as  whether  it  is  in 
sured  or  not.  "  But  what  shall  I  do  with  my  furniture  ?" 
My  gay  butterfly  is  entangled  in  a  spider's  web  then. 
Even  those  who  seem  for  a  long  while  not  to  have  any, 
if  you  inquire  more  narrowly  you  will  find  have  some 
stored  in  somebody's  barn.  I  look  upon  England  to 
day  as  an  old  gentleman  who  is  travelling  with  a  great 
deal  of  baggage,  trumpery  which  has  accumulated  from 
Jong  housekeeping,  which  he  has  not  the  courage  to 
burn ;  great  trunk,  little  trunk,  bandbox  and  bundle. 
Throw  away  the  first  three  at  least.  It  would  surpass 
the  powers  of  a  well  man  nowadays  to  take  up  his  bed 
and  walk,  and  I  should  certainly  advise  a  sick  one  to 
lay  down  his  bed  and  run.  When  I  have  met  an  im- 


FURNITURE.  73 

migrant  tottering  under  a  bundle  which  contained  his 
all  — looking  like  an  enormous  wen  which  had  grown  out 
of  the  nape  of  his  neck  —  I  have  pitied  him,  not  because 
that  was  his  all,  but  because  he  had  all  thai  to  carry. 
If  I  have  got  to  drag  my  trap,  I  will  take  care  that  it 
be  a  light  one  and  do  not  nip  me  in  a  vital  part.  But 
perchance  it  would  be  wisest  never  to  put  one's  paw 
mtc  it. 

I  would  observe,  by  the  way,  that  it  costs  me  nothing 
for  curtains,  for  I  have  no  gazers  to  shut  out  but  the  sun 
and  moon,  and  I  am  willing  that  they  should  look  in. 
The  moon  will  not  sour  milk  nor  taint  meat  of  mine, 
nor  will  the  sun  injure  my  furniture  or  fade  my  carpet, 
and  if  he  is  sometimes  too  warm  a  friend,  I  find  it  still 
better  economy  to  retreat  behind  some  curtain  which 
nature  has  provided,  than  to  add  a  single  item  to  the  de 
tails  of  housekeeping.  A  lady  once  offered  me  a  mat. 
but  as  I  had  no  room  to  spare  within  the  house,  nor  time 
to  spare  within  or  without  to  shake  it,  I  declined  it, 
preferring  to  wipe  my  feet  on  the  sod  before  my  door. 
It  is  best  to  avoid  the  beginnings  of  evil. 

Not  long  since  I  was  present  at  the  auction  of  a  dea 
con's  effects,  for  his  life  had  not  been  ineffectual :  — 

"  The  evil  that  men  do  lives  after  them." 

As  usual,  a  great  proportion  was  trumpery  which  had 
hagiin  to  accumulate  in  his  father's  day.  Among  the 
rest  was  a  dried  tapeworm.  And  now,  after  lying  half 
a  century  in  his  garret  and  other  dust  holes,  these  things 
were  not  burned ;  instead  of  a  bonfire,  or  purifying  de 
struction  of  them,  there  was  an  auction,  or  increasing 
of  them.  The  neighbors  eagerly  collected  to  view  them, 


74  WALDEN. 

bought  them  all,  and  carefully  transported  them  to  their 
garrets  and  dust  holes,  to  lie  there  till  their  estates  are 
settled,  when  they  will  start  again.  When  a  man  dies 
he  kicks  the  dust. 

The  customs  of  some  savage  nations  might,  perchance, 
be  profitably  imitated  by  us,  for  they  at  least  go  through 
the  semblance  of  casting  their  slough  annually ;  they 
Lave  the  idea  of  the  thing,  whether  they  have  the  real 
ity  or  not.  Would  it  not  be  well  if  we  were  to  cele 
brate  such  a  "  busk,"  or  "  feast  of  first  fruits,"  as  Bar- 
tram  describes  to  have  been  the  custom  of  the  Mucclasse 
Indians  ?  "  When  a  town  celebrates  the  busk,"  says 
he,  "  having  previously  provided  themselves  with  new 
clothes,  new  pots,  pans,  and  other  household  utensils 
and  furniture,  they  collect  all  their  worn  out  clothes 
and  other  despicable  things,  sweep  and  cleanse  their 
houses,  squares,  and  the  whole  town,  of  their  filth, 
which  with  all  the  remaining  grain  and  other  old  pro 
visions  they  cast  together  into  one  common  heap,  and 
consume  it  with  fire.  After  having  taken  medicine,  arid 
fasted  for  three  days,  all  the  fire  in  the  town  is  extin 
guished.  During  this  fast  they  abstain  from  the  grat 
ification  of  every  appetite  and  passion  whatever.  A 
general  amnesty  is  proclaimed ;  all  malefactors  may  re 
turn  to  their  town.  — " 

"  On  the  fourth  morning,  the  high  priest,  by  rubbing 
dry  wood  together,  produces*  new  fire  in  the  public 
square,  from  whence  every  habitation  in  the  town  is 
supplied  with  the  new  and  pure  flame." 

They  then  feast  on  the  new  corn  and  fruits  and 
dance  and  sing  for  three  days,  "  and  the  four  following 
days  they  receive  visits  and  rejoice  with  their  friends 
from  neig'.il  oring  towns  who  have  in  like  manner  pu 
rified  and  prepared  themselves." 


ECONOMY.  75 

The  Mexicans  also  practised  a  similar  purification  at 
tlie  end  of  every  fifty-two  years,  in  the  belief  that  it 
was  time  for  the  world  to  come  to  an  end. 

I  have  scarcely  heard  of  a  truer  sacrament,  that  is, 
as  the  dictionary  defines  it,  "  outward  arid  visible  sign 
of  an  inward  and  spiritual  grace,"  than  this,  and  I  have 
no  doubt  that  they  were  originally  inspired  directly  from 
Heaven  to  do  thus,  though  they  have  no  biblical  recoid 
of  the  revelation. 


For  more  than  five  years  I  maintained  myself  thus 
solely  by  the  labor  of  my  hands,  ani  I  found,  that  by 
working  about  six  weeks  in  a  year,  I  could  meet  all  the 
expenses  of  living.  The  whole  of  my  winters,  as  well 
as  most  of  my  summers,  I  had  free  and  clear  for  study. 
I  have  thoroughly  tried  school-keeping,  and  found  that 
my  expenses  were  in  proportion,  or  rather  out  of  pro 
portion,  to  my  income,  for  I  was  obliged  to  dress  and 
train,  not  to  say  think  and  believe,  accordingly,  and  I 
lost  my  time  into  the  bargain.  As  I  did  not  teach  foi 
the  good  of  my  fellow-men,  but  simply  for  a  livelihood, 
this  was  a  failure.  I  have  tried  trade ;  but  I  found  that 
it  would  take  ten  years  to  get  under  way  in  that,  and 
that  then  I  should  probably  be  on  my  way  to  the  devil. 
I  was  actually  afraid  that  I  might  by  that  time  be  doing 
what  is  called  a  good  business.  When  formerly  I  wa& 
looking  about  to  see  what  I  could  do  for  a  living,  some 
sad  experience  in  conforming  to  the  wishes  of  friend* 
being  fresh  in  my  mind  to  tax  my  ingenuity,  I  though 
often  and  seriously  of  picking  huckleberries ;  that  sure 
ly  I  could  do,  and  its  small  profits  might  suffice,  —  foi 
my  greatest  -kill  has  been  t«  want  but  little,  —  so  little 


76  WALDEN. 

capital  it  required,  so  little  distraction  from  my  wonted 
moods,  I  foolishly  thought.  While  my  acquaintances 
went  unhesitatingly  into  trade  or  the  professions,  I  con 
templated  this  occupation  as  most  like  theirs  ;  ranging 
the  hill=  all  summer  to  pick  the  berries  which  came  in 
my  way,  and  thereafter  carelessly  dispose  of  them;  so, 
to  keep  the  flocks  of  Admetus.  I  also  dreamed  that  I 
might  gather  the  wild  herbs,  or  carry  evergreens  to  such 
villagers  as  loved  to  be  reminded  of  the  woods,  even  to 
the  city,  by  hay-cart  loads.  But  I  have  since  learned 
that  trade  curses  every  thing  it  handles ;  and  though  you 
trade  in  messages  from  heaven,  the  whole  curse  of  trade 
attaches  to  the  business. 

As  I  preferred  some  things  to  others,  and  especially 
valued  my  freedom,  as  I  could  fare  hard  and  yet  suc 
ceed  well,  I  did  not  wish  to  spend  my  time  in  earning 
rich  carpets  or  other  fine  furniture,  or  delicate  cookery, 
or  a  house  in  the  Grecian  or  the  Gothic  style  just  yet. 
If  there  are  any  to  whom  it  is  no  interruption  to  acquire 
these  things,  and  who  know  how  to  use  them  when  ac 
quired,  I  relinquish  to  them  the  pursuit.  Some  are 
"  industrious,"  and  appear  to  love  labor  for  its  own 
sake,  or  perhaps  because  it  keeps  them  out  of  worse 
mischief;  to  such  I  have  at  present  nothing  to  say. 
Those  who  would  not  know  what  to  do  with  more  lei 
sure  than  they  now  enjoy,  I  might  advise  to  work  twice 
as  hard  as  they  do,  —  work  till  they  pay  for  themselves, 
and  get  their  free  papers.  For  myself  I  found  that  the 
occupation  of  a  day-laborer  was  the  most  independent 
of  any,  especially  as  it  required  only  thirty  or  forty 
days  in  a  year  to  support  one.  The  laborer's  day  ends 
with  the  going  down  of  the  sun,  and  he  is  then  free  to 
devote  himself  to  his  chosen  pursuit,  independent  of  hit 


ECONOMY.  77 

labor ;  but  his  employer,  who  speculates  from  month  to 
month,  has  no  respite  from  one  end  of  the  year  to  the 
other. 

In  short,  I  am  convinced,  both  by  faith  and  experi 
ence,  that  to  maintain  one's  self  on  this  earth  is  not  a 
hardship  but  a  pastime,  if  we  will  live  simply  and 
wisely;  as  the  pursuits  of  the  simpler  nations  are  still 
the  sports  of  the  more  artificial.  It  is  not  necessary 
that  a  man  should  earn  his  living  by  the  sweat  of  his 
brow,  unless  he  sweats  easier  than  I  do. 

One  young  man  of  my  acquaintance,  who  has  in 
herited  some  acres,  told  me  that  he  thought  he  should 
live  as  I  did,  if  he  had  the  means.  I  would  not  have 
any  one  adopt  my  mode  of  living  on  any  account ;  for, 
beside  that  before  he  has  fairly  learned  it  I  may  have 
found  out  another  for  myself,  I  desire  that  there  may  be 
as  many  different  persons  in  the  world  as  possible ;  but 
I  would  have  each  one  be  very  careful  to  find  out  and 
pursue  his  own  way,  and  not  his  father's  or  his  mother's 
or  his  neighbor's  instead.  The  youth  may  build  or 
plant  or  sail,  only  let  him  not  be  hindered  from  doing 
that  which  he  tells  me  he  would  like  to  do.  It  is  by  a 
mathematical  point  only  that  we  are  wise,  as  the  sailor 
or  the  fugitive  slave  keeps  the  polestar  in  his  eye ;  but 
that  is  sufficient  guidance  for  all  our  life.  We  may  not 
arrive  at  our  port  within  a  calculable  period,  but  we 
would  preserve  the  true  course. 

Undoubtedly,  in  this  case,  what  is  true  for  one  is 
truer  still  for  a  thousand,  as  a  large  house  is  not  pro 
portionally  more  expensive  than  a  small  one,  since  one 
roof  may  cover,  one  cellar  underlie,  and  one  wall  sep 
arate  several  apartments.  But  for  my  part,  I  pre 
ferred  the  solitary  dwelling.  Moreover,  it  will  com- 


78  WALDEN. 

monly  be  cheaper  to  build  the  whole  yourself  than  to 
convince  another  of  the  advantage  of  the  common  wall ; 
and  when  you  have  done  this,  the  common  partition,  to 
be  much  cheaper,  must  be  a  thin  one,  and  that  other 
may  prove  a  bad  neighbor,  and  also  not  keep  his  side  in 
repair.  The  only  cooperation  which  is  commonly  pos 
sible  is  exceedingly  partial  and  superficial;  and  what 
little  true  cooperation  there  is,  is  as  if  it  were  not,  being 
a  harmony  inaudible  to  men.  If  a  man  has  faith  he 
will  cooperate  with  equal  faith  every  where  ;  if  he  has 
not  faith,  he  will  continue  to  live  like  the  rest  of  the 
world,  whatever  company  he  is  joined  to.  To  cooperate, 
in  the  highest  as  well  as  the  lowest  sense,  means  to  get 
our  living  together.  I  heard  it  proposed  lately  that  two 
young  men  should  travel  together  over  the  world,  the 
one  without  money,  earning  his  means  as  he  went,  before 
the  mast  and  behind  the  plough,  the  other  carrying  a 
bill  of  exchange  in  his  pocket.  It  was  easy  to  see  that 
they  could  not  long  be  companions  or  cooperate,  since 
one  would  not  operate  at  all.  They  would  part  at  the 
first  interesting  crisis  in  their  adventures.  Above  all, 
as  I  have  implied,  the  man  who  goes  alone  can  start 
to-day ;  but  he  who  travels  with  another  must  wait  till 
that  other  is  ready,  and  it  may  be  a  long  time  before 
they  get  off. 


But  all  this  is  very  selfish,  I  have  heard  some  of  my 
townsmen  say.  I  confess  that  I  have  hitherto  indulged 
little  in  philanthropic  enterprises.  I  have  made 
sacrifices  to  a  sense  of  duty,  and  among  others 
have  sacrificed  this  pleasure  also.  There  are  those  who 
>*ave  used  all  their  arts  to  persuade  me  to  undertake 


PHILANTHROPY.  79 

the  support  of  some  poor  family  in  the  town ;  and  if  1 
had  nothing  to  do,  —  for  the  devil  finds  employment  for 
the  idle,  —  I  might  try  my  hand  at  some  such  pastime  as 
that.  However,  when  I  have  thought  to  indulge  myself 
in  this  respect,  and  lay  their  Heaven  under  an  obliga 
tion  by  maintaining  certain  poor  per&ons  in  all  respects 
as  comfortably  as  I  maintain  myself,  and  have  even 
ventured  so  far  as  to  make  them  the  offer,  they  have 
one  and  all  unhesitatingly  preferred  to  remain  poor. 
While  my  townsmen  and  women  are  devoted  in  so  many 
ways  to  the  good  of  their  fellows,  I  trust  that  one  at  least 
may  be  spared  to  other  and  less  humane  pursuits.  You 
must  have  a  genius  for  charity  as  well  as  for  any  thing 
else.  As  for  Doing-good,  that  is  one  of  the  professions 
which  are  full.  Moreover,  I  have  tried  it  fairly,  and, 
strange  as  it  may  seem,  am  satisfied  that  it  does  not 
agree  with  my  constitution.  Probably  I  should  not  con 
sciously  and  deliberately  forsake  my  particular  calling 
to  do  the  good  which  society  demands  of  me,  to  save  the 
universe  from  annihilation  ;  and  I  believe  that  a  like  but 
infinitely  greater  steadfastness  elsewhere  is  all  that  now 
preserves  it.  But  I  would  not  stand  between  any  man 
and  his  genius ;  and  to  him  who  does  this  work,  which 
I  decline,  with  his  whole  heart  and  soul  and  life,  I  would 
say,  Persevere,  even  if  the  world  call  it  doing  evil,  as  it 
is  most  likely  they  will. 

I  am  far  from  supposing  that  my  case  is  a  peculiar 
one ;  no  doubt  many  of  my  readers  would  make  a  sim 
ilar  defence.  At  doing  something,  —  I  will  not  engage 
that  my  neighbors  shall  pronounce  it  good,  —  I  do  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  I  should  be  a  capital  fellow  to  hire ; 
but  what  that  is,  it  is  for  my  employer  to  find  out. 
What  good  I  do,  in  the  common  sense  of  that  word,  must 


80  WALDEN. 

be  aoide  from  my  main  path,  and  for  the  most  part 
wholly  unintended.  Men  say,  practically,  Begin  where 
you  are  and  such  as  you  are,  without  aiming  mainly  to 
become  of  more  worth,  and  with  kindness  aforethought 
go  about  doing  good.  If  I  were  to  preach  at  all  in  this 
strain,  I  should  say  rather,  Set  about  being  good.  As  if 
the  sun  should  stop  when  he  had  kindled  his  fires  up  to 
the  splendor  of  a  moon  or  a  star  of  the  sixth  magnitude, 
and  go  about  like  a  Robin  Goodfellow,  peeping  in  at 
every  cottage  window,  inspiring  lunatics,  and  tainting 
meats,  and  making  darkness  visible,  instead  of  steadily 
increasing  his  genial  heat  and  beneficence  till  he  is  of 
such  brightness  that  no  mortal  can  look  him  in  the  face, 
and  then,  and  in  the  mean  while  too,  going  about  the 
world  in  his  own  orbit,  doing  it  good,  or  rather,  as  a 
truer  philosophy  has  discovered,  the  world  going  about 
him  getting  good.  When  Phaeton,  wishing  to  prove 
his  heavenly  birth  by  his  beneficence,  had  the  sun's 
chariot  but  one  day,  and  drove  out  of  the  beaten  track, 
he  burned  several  blocks  of  houses  in  the  lower  streets 
of  heaven,  and  scorched  the  surface  of  the  earth,  and 
dried  up  every  spring,  and  made  the  great  desert  of 
Sahara,  till  at  length  Jupiter  hurled  him  headlong  to 
the  earth  with  a  thunderbolt,  and  the  sun,  through  grief 
at  his  death,  did  not  shine  for  a  year. 

There  is  no  odor  so  bad  as  that  which  arises  from 
goodness  tainted.  It  is  human,  it  is  divine,  carrion.  If 
I  knew  for  a  certainty  that  a  man  was  coming  to  my 
house  with  the  conscious  design  of  doing  me  good,  I 
should  run  for  my  life,  as  from  that  dry  and  parching 
wind  of  the  African  deserts  called  the  simoom,  which 
fills  the  mouth  and  nose  and  ears  and  eyes  with  dust  til] 
you  are  suifocated,  for  fear  that  I  should  get  some  of 


PHILANTHROPY.  81 

his  good  done  to  me,  —  some  of  its  virus  mingled  with 
my  blood.  No,  —  in  this  case  I  would  rather  suffer  evil 
the  natural  way.  A  man  is  not  a  good  man  to  me 
because  he  will  feed  me  if  I  should  be  starving,  or  warm 
me  if  I  should  be  freezing,  or  pull  me  out  of  a  ditch  if 
I  should  ever  fall  into  one.  I  can  find  you  a  New 
foundland  dog  that  will  do  as  much.  Philanthropy  is 
not  love  for  one's  fellow-man  in  the  broadest  sense 
Howard  was  no  doubt  an  exceedingly  kind  and  worthy 
man  in  his  way,  and  has  his  reward ;  but,  comparatively 
speaking,  what  are  a  hundred  Howards  to  us,  if  their 
philanthropy  do  not  help  us  in  our  best  estate,  when  we 
are  most  worthy  to  be  helped  ?  I  never  heard  of  a 
philanthropic  meeting  in  which  it  was  sincerely  pro 
posed  to  do  any  good  to  me,  or  the  like  of  me. 

The  Jesuits  were  quite  balked  by  those  Indians  who, 
being  burned  at  the  stake,  suggested  new  modes  of  tor 
ture  to  their  tormentors.  Being  superior  to  physical 
suffering,  it  sometimes  chanced  that  they  were  superior 
to  any  consolation  which  the  missionaries  could  offer ; 
and  the  law  to  do  as  you  would  be  .done  by  fell  with 
less  persuasiveness  on  the  ears  of  those,  who,  for  their 
part,  did  not  care  how  they  were  done  by,  who  loved 
their  enemies  after  a  new  fashion,  and  came  very  near 
freely  forgiving  them  all  they  did. 

Be  sure  that  you  give  the  poor  the  aid  they  most 
need,  though  it  be  your  example  which  leaves  them  far 
behind.  If  you  give  money,  spend  yourself  with  it,  and 
do  not  merely  abandon  it  to  them.  We  make  curious 
mistakes  sometimes.  Often  the  poor  man  is  not  so 
cold  and  hungry  as  he  is  dirty  and  ragged  and  gross. 
It  is  partly  his  taste,  and  not  merely  his  misfortune. 
Tf  you  give  him  money,  he  will  perhaps  buy  more  rags 
G 


82  WALDEN. 

with  it.  I  was  wont  to  pity  the  clumsy  Irish  laborers 
who  cut  ice  on  the  pond,  in  such  mean  and  ragged 
clothes,  while  I  shivered  in  my  more  tidy  and  somewhat 
more  fashionable  garments,  till,  one  bitter  cold  day,  one 
whi  had  slipped  into  the  water  came  to  my  house  to 
warm  him,  and  I  saw  him  strip  off  three  pairs  of  pants 
and  two  pairs  of  stockings  ere  he  got  down  to  the  skin, 
though  they  were  dirty  and  ragged  enough,  it  is  true, 
and  that  he  could  afford  to  refuse  the  extra  garments 
which  I  offered  him,  he  had  so  many  intra  ones. 
This  ducking  was  the  very  thing  he  needed.  Then  I 
began  to  pity  myself,  and  I  saw  that  it  would  be  a  greater 
charity  to  bestow  on  me  a  flannel  shirt  than  a  whole 
slop-shop  on  him.  There  are  a  thousand  hacking  at  the 
branches  of  evil  to  one  who  is  striking  at  the  root,  and 
it  may  be  that  he  who  bestows  the  largest  amount  of 
time  and  money  on  the  needy  is  doing  the  most  by  his 
mode  of  life  to  produce  that  misery  which  he  strives  in 
vain  to  relieve.  It  is  the  pious  slave-breeder  devoting 
the  proceeds  of  every  tenth  slave  to  buy  a  Sunday's  lib 
erty  for  the  rest..  Some  show  their  kindness  to  the 
poor  by  employing  them  in  their  kitchens.  Would  they 
not  be  kinder  if  they  employed  themselves  there  ?  You 
boast  of  spending  a  tenth  part  of  your,  income  in  char 
ity  ;  may  be  you  should  spend  the  nine  tenths  so,  and 
done  with  it.  Society  recovers  only  a  tenth  part  of  the 
property  then.  Is  this  owing  to  the  generosity  of  him 
in  whose  possession  it  is  found,  or  to  the  remissness  of 
the  officers  of  justice  ? 

Philanthropy  is  almost  the  only  virtue  which  is  suf 
ficiently  appreciated  by  mankind.  Nay,  it  is  greatly 
overrated ;  and  it  is  our  selfishness  which  overrates  it. 
A  robust  poor  man,  one  sunny  day  here  in  Concord, 


PHILANTHROPY.  83 

praised  a  fellow-townsman  to  me,  because,  as  he  said, 
he  was  kind  to  the  poor ;  meaning  himself.  The  kind 
uncles  and  aunts  of  the  race  are  more  esteemed  than  its 
true  spiritual  fathers  and  mothers.  I  once  heard  a 
reverend  lecturer  on  England,  a  man  of  learning  and 
intelligence,  after  enumerating  her  scientific,  literary, 
and  political  worthies,  Shakspeare,  Bacon,  Cromwell, 
Milton,  Newton,  and  others,  speak  next  of  her  Christian 
heroes,  whom,  as  if  his  profession  required  it  of  him,  he 
elevated  to  a  place  far  above  all  the  rest,  as  the  great 
est  of  the  great.  They  were  Penn,  Howard,  and  Mrs. 
Fry.  Every  one  must  feel  the  falsehood  and  cant  of 
this.  The  last  were  not  England's  best  men  and 
women  ;  only,  perhaps,  her  best  philanthropists. 

I  would  not  subtract  any  thing  from  the  praise  that  is 
due  to  philanthropy,  but  merely  demand  justice  for  all 
who  by  their  lives  and  works  are  a  blessing  to  mankind. 
i  do  not  value  chiefly  a  man's  uprightness  and  benev 
olence,  which  are,  as  it  were,  his  stem  and  leaves. 
Those  plants  of  whose  greenness  withered  we  make 
herb  tea  for  the  sick,  serve  but  a  humble  use,  and  are 
most  employed  by  quacks.  I  want  the  flower  and 
fruit  of  a  man;  that  some  fragrance  be  wafted  over 
from  him  to  me,  and  some  ripeness  flavor  our  inter 
course.  His  goodness  must  not  be  a  partial  and  tran 
sitory  act,  but  a  constant  superfluity,  which  costs  him 
nothing  and  of  which  he  is  unconscious.  This  is  a 
charity  that  hides  a  multitude  of  sins.  The  philan 
thropist  too  often  surrounds  mankind  with  the  remem 
brance  of  his  own  cast-off  griefs  as  an  atmosphere,  and 
palls  it  sympathy.  We  should  impart  our  courage,  and 
not  our  despair,  our  health  and  ease,  and  not  our  disease, 
and  take  care  that  this  does  not  spread  by  contagion, 


84  WALDEN. 

From  what  southern  phins  comes  up  the  voice  of  wail 
ing  ?  Under  \^  hat  latitudes  reside  the  heathen  to  whom 
we  would  send  light  ?  Who  is  that  intemperate  and 
brutal  man  whom  we  would  redeem  ?  If  any  thing  ail 
a  man,  so  that  he  does  not  perform  his  functions,  if 
he  have  a  pain  in  his  bowels  even,  —  for  that  is  the  seat 
of  sympathy,  —  he  forthwith  sets  about  reforming  — 
the  world.  Being  a  microcosm  himself,  he  discovers,  and 
it  is  a  true  discovery,  and  he  is  the  man  to  make  it,  —  that 
the  world  has  been  eating  green  apples ;  to  his  eyes,  in 
fact,  the  globe  itself  is  a  great  green  apple,  which  there 
is  danger  awful  to  think  of  that  the  children  of  men  will 
nibble  before  it  is  ripe  ;  and  straightway  his  drastic 
philanthropy  seeks  out  the  Esquimaux  and  the  Pata- 
gonian,  and  embraces  the  populous  Indian  and  Chinese 
villages ;  and  thus,  by  a  few  years  of  philanthropic  ac 
tivity,  the  powers  in  the  mean  while  using  him  for  their 
own  ends,  no  doubt,  he  cures  himself  of  his  dyspepsia, 
the  globe  acquires  a  faint  blush  on  one  or  both  of  its 
cheeks,  as  if  it  were  beginning  to  be  ripe,  and  life  loses  its 
crudity  and  is  once  more  sweet  and  wholesome  to  live. 
I  never  dreamed  of  any  enormity  greater  than  I  have 
committed.  I  never  knew,  and  never  shall  know,  a 
worse  man  than  myself. 

I  believe  that  what  so  saddens  the  reformer  is  not  his 
sympathy  with  his  fellows  in  distress,  but,  though  he 
be  the  holiest  son  of  God,  is  his  private  ail.  Let  this 
be  righted,  let  the  spring  come  to  him,  the  morning  rise 
over  his  couch,  and  he  will  forsake  his  generous  com 
panions  without  apology.  My  excuse  for  not  lecturing 
against  the  use  of  tobacco  is,  that  I  never  chewed  it 
that  is  a  penalty  which  reformed  tobacco-chewers  have  to 
pay;  though  there  are  things  enough  1  have  chewed, 


PHIJ.ANTHROPf.  85 

which  I  could  lecture  against.  If  you  should  ever  bo 
betrayed  into  any  of  these  philanthropies,  do  not  let 
your  left  hand  know  what  your  right  hand  does,  for  it  is 
not  worth  knowing.  Rescue  the  drowning  and  tie  your 
shoe-strings.  Take  your  time,  and  set  about  some  free 
labor. 

Our  manners  have  been  corrupted  by  communication 
with  the  saints.  Our  hymn-books  resound  with  a  melo 
dious  cursing  of  God  and  enduring  him  forever.  One 
would  say  that  even  the  prophets  and  redeemers  had 
rather  consoled  the  fears  than  confirmed  the  hopes  of 
man.  There  is  nowhere  recorded  a  simple  and  irre 
pressible  satisfaction  with  the  gift  of  life,  any  memo 
rable  praise  of  God.  All  health  and  success  does  me 
good,  however  far  off  and  withdrawn  it  may  appear ; 
all  disease  and  failure  helps  to  make  me  sad  and  does 
me  evil,  however  much  sympathy  it  may  have  with  me 
or  I  with  it.  If,  then,  we  would  indeed  restore  man 
kind  by  truly  Indian,  botanic,  magnetic,  or  natural  means, 
let  us  first  be  as  simple  and  well  as  Nature  ourselves, 
dispel  the  clouds  which  hang  over  our  own  brows,  and 
take  up  a  little  life  into  our  pores.  Do  not  stay  to  be 
an  overseer  of  the  poor,  but  endeavor  to  become  one  of 
the  worthies  of  the  world. 

I  read  in  the  Gulistan,  or  Flower  Garden,  of  Sheik 
Sadi  of  Shiraz,  that  u  They  asked  a  wise  man,  saying ; 
Of  the  many  celebrated  trees  which  the  Most  High  God 
has  created  lofty  and  umbrageous,  they  call  none  azad, 
or  free,  excepting  the  cypress,  which  bears  no  fruit; 
what  mystery  is  there  in  this?  He  replied;  Each  has 
its  appropriate  produce,  and  appointed  season,  during 
the  continuance  of  which  it  is  fresh  and  blooming,  an*1 
during  their  absence  dry  and  withered;  to  nei'u.er  o* 


86  WALDEN. 

which  states  is  the  cypress  exposed,  being  always  flour 
ishing  ;  and  of  this  nature  are  the  azads,  or  religious 
independents.  —  Fix  not  thy  heart  on  that  which  is 
transitory ;  for  the  Dijlah,  or  Tigris,  will  continue  to 
flow  through  Bagdad  after  the  race  of  caliphs  is  extinct : 
if  thy  hand  has  plenty,  be  liberal  as  the  date  tree ;  but 
if  it  affords  nothing  to  give  away,  be  an  azad,  or  free 
man,  like  the  cypress." 


COMPLEMENT AL  VERSES. 

THE  PRETENSIONS  OF  POVERTY. 

"Thou  dost  presume  too  much,  poor  needy  wretch, 
To  claim  a  station  in  the  firmament, 
Because  thj  humble  cottage,  or  thy  tub, 
Nurses  some  lazy  or  pedantic  virtue 
In  the  cheap  sunshine  or  by  shady  springs, 
With  roots  and  pot-herbs  ;  where  thy  right  hand, 
Tearing  those  humane  passions  from  the  mind, 
Upon  whose  stocks  fair  blooming  virtues  flourish, 
Degradeth  nature,  and  benumbeth  sense, 
And,  Gorgon-like,  turns  active  men  to  stone 
"We  not  require  the  dull  society 
Of  your  necessitated  temperance, 
Or  that  unnatural  stupidity 
That  knows  nor  joy  nor  sorrow;  nor  your  forc'd 
Falsely  exalted  passive  fortitude 
Above  the  active.     This  low  abject  brood, 
That  fix  their  seats  in  mediocrity, 
Become  your  servile  minds ;  but  we  advance 
Such  virtues  only  as  admit  excess, 
Brave,  bounteous  acts,  regal  magnificence, 
All-seeing  prudence,  magnanimity 
That  knows  no  bound,  and  that  heroic  virtue 
For  which  antiquity  hath  left  no  name, 
But  patterns  only,  such  as  Hercules, 
Achilles,  Theseus.    Back  to  thy  loath'd  cell ; 
And  when  thou  seest  the  new  enlightened  sphere, 
Study  to  know  but  what  those  worthies  were." 

T.  CARBW 


WHERE  I  LIVED,  AND  WHAT  I  LIVED  FOR. 


AT  a  certain  season  of  our  life  we  are  accustomed 
to  consider  every  spot  as  the  possible  site  of  a  house. 
I  have  thus  surveyed  the  country  on  every  side  within 
a  dozen  miles  of  where  I  live.  In  imagination  I  have 
bought  all  the  farms  in  succession,  for  all  were  to  be 
bought,  and  I  knew  their  price.  I  walked  over  each 
farmer's  premises,  tasted  his  wild  apples,  discoursed  on 
husbandry  with  him,  took  his  farm  at  his  price,  at  any 
price,  mortgaging  it  to  him  in  my  mind;  even  put  a 
higher  price  on  it,  —  took  every  thing  but  a  deed  of 
it,  —  took  his  word  for  his  deed,  for  I  dearly  love  to 
talk,  —  cultivated  it,  and  him  too  to  some  extent,  I  trust, 
and  withdrew  when  I  had  enjoyed  it  long  enough,  leav 
ing  him  to  carry  it  on.  This  experience  entitled  me  to 
be  regarded  as  a  sort  of  real-estate  broker  by  my  friends. 
"Wherever  I  sat,  there  I  might  live,  and  the  landscape 
radiated  from  me  accordingly.  What  is  a  house  but  a 
sedes,  a  seat  ?  —  better  if  a  country  seat.  I  discovered 
many  a  site  for  a  house  not  likely  to  be  soon  im 
proved,  which  some  might  have  thought  too  far  from  the 
village,  but  to  my  eyes  the  village  was  too  far  from  it 


WHERE    I    LIVED.  89 

Well,  there  I  might  live,  I  said ;  and  there  I  did  live, 
for  an  hour,  a  summer  and  a  winter  life ;  saw  how  I 
could  let  the  years  run  off,  buffet  the  winter  through, 
and  see  the  spring  come  in.  The  future  inhabitants  of 
this  region,  wherever  they  may  place  their  houses,  may 
be  sure  that  they  have  been  anticipated.  An  afternoon 
sufficed  to  lay  out  the  land  into  orchard,  woodlot,  and 
pasture,  and  to  decide  what  fine  oaks  or  pines  should  be 
left  to  stand  before  the  door,  and  whence  each  blasted 
tree  could  be  seen  to  the  best  advantage ;  and  then  I  let 
it  lie,  fallow  perchance,  for  a  man  is  rich  in  proportion 
to  the  number  of  things  which  he  can  afford  to  let  alone. 
My  imagination  carried  me  so  far  that  I  even  had 
the  refusal  of  several  farms,  —  the  refusal  was  all  I 
wanted,  —  but  I  never  got  my  fingers  burned  by  actual 
possession.  The  nearest  that  I  came  to  actual  posses 
sion  was  when  I  bought  the  Hollowell  place,  and  had 
begun  to  sort  my  seeds,  and  collected  materials  with 
which  to  make  a  wheelbarrow  to  carry  it  on  or  off  with ; 
but  before  the  owner  gave  me  a  deed  of  it,  his  wife  — 
every  man  has  such  a  wife  —  changed  her  mind  and 
wished  to  keep  it,  and  he  offered  me  ten  dollars  to  re 
lease  him.  Now,  to  speak  the  truth,  I  had  but  tea 
cents  in  the  world,  and  it  surpassed  my  arithmetic  to 
tell,  if  I  was  that  man  who  had  ten  cents,  or  who  had  a 
farm,  or  ten  dollars,  or  all  together.  However,  I  let 
him  keep  the  ten  dollars  and  the  farm  too,  for  I  had 
carried  it  far  enough ;  or  rather,  to  be  generous,  I  sold 
him  the  farm  for  just  what  I  gave  for  it,  and,  as  he  was 
not  a  rich  man,  made  him  a  present  of  ten  dollars,  and 
still  had  my  ten  cents,  and  seeds,  and  materials  for 
a  wheelbarrow  left.  I  found  thus  that  I  had  been  a 
rich  man  without  any  damage  to  my  poverty.  But  I 


WALDEN. 

retained  the  landscape,  and  I  have  since  annually  car 
ried  off  what  it  yielded  without  a  wheelbarrow.  With 
respect  to  landscapes,  — 

"  I  am  monarch  of  all  I  survey, 
My  right  there  is  none  to  dispute." 

1  have  frequently  seen  a  poet  withdraw,  having  en 
joyed  the  most  valuable  part  of  a  farm,  while  the  crusty 
farmer  supposed  that  he  had  got  a  few  wild  apples  only. 
Why,  the  owner  does  not  know  it  for  many  years  when 
a  poet  has  put  his  farm  in  rhyme,  the  most  admirable 
kind  of  invisible  fence,  has  fairly  impounded  it,  milked 
it,  skimmed  it,  and  got  all  the  cream,  and  left  the  farmer 
only  the  skimmed  milk. 

The  real  attractions  of  the  Hollowell  farm,  to  me, 
were;  its  complete  retirement,  being  about  two  miles 
from  the  village,  half  a  mile  from  the  nearest  neighbor, 
and  separated  from  the  highway  by  a  broad  field ;  its 
bounding  on  the  river,  which  the  owner  said  protected 
it  by  its  fogs  from  frosts  in  the  spring,  though  that  was 
nothing  to  me ;  the  gray  color  and  ruinous  state  of  the 
house  and  barn,  and  the  dilapidated  fences,  which  put 
such  an  interval  between  me  and  the  last  occupant ;  the 
hollow  and  lichen-covered  apple  trees,  gnawed  by  rab 
bits,  showing  what  kind  of  neighbors  I  should  have ; 
but  above  all,  the  recollection  I  had  of  it  from  my  ear 
liest  voyages  up  the  river,  when  the  house  was  concealed 
behind  a  dense  grove  of  red  maples,  through  which  I 
heard  the  house-dog  bark.  I  was  in  haste  to  buy  it, 
before  the  proprietor  finished  getting  out  some  rocks, 
cutting  down  the  hollow  apple  trees,  and  grubbing  up 
Borne  young  birches  which  had  sprung  up  in  the  pasture, 
or,  in  short,  had  made  any  more  of  his  improvements. 


WHERE    I    LIVED.  91 

To  enjoy  these  advantages  I  was  ready  to  carry  it  on ; 
like  Atlas,  to  take  the  world  on  my  shoulders, —  I  never 
heard  what  compensation  he  received  for  that,  —  and  do 
all  those  things  which  had  no  other  motive  or  excuse 
but  that  I  might  pay  for  it  and  be  unmolested  in  my 
possession  of  it ;  for  I  knew  all  the  while  that  it  would 
yield  the  most  abundant  crop  of  the  kind  I  wanted  if  I 
could  only  afford  to  let  it  alone.  But  it  turned  out  as  I 
have  said. 

Ah1  that  I  could  say,  then,  with  respect  to  farming  on 
a  large  scale,  (I  have  always  cultivated  a  garden,)  was, 
that  I  had  had  my  seeds  ready.  Many  think  that  seeds 
improve  with  age.  I  have  no  doubt  that  time  discrim 
inates  between  the  good  and  the  bad ;  and  when  at  last  I 
shall  plant,  I  shall  be  less  likely  to  be  disappointed. 
But  I  would  say  to  my  fellows,  once  for  all,  As  long  as 
possible  live  free  and  uncommitted.  It  makes  but  little 
difference  whether  you  are  committed  to  a  farm  or  the 
county  jail. 

Old  Cato,  whose  "  De  Re  Rustica  "  is  my  "  Cultiva 
tor,"  says,  and  the  only  translation  I  have  seen  makes 
sheer  nonsense  of  the  passage,  "  When  you  think  of 
getting  a  fan.n,  turn  it  thus  in  your  mind,  not  to  buy 
greedily ;  no  spare  your  pains  to  look  at  it,  and  do  not 
think  it  enougii  to  go  round  it  once.  The  oftener  you 
go  there  the  more  it  will  please  you,  if  it  is  good."  I 
think  I  shall  not  buy  greedily,  but  go  round  and  round 
it  as  long  as  I  live,  and  bo  buried  in  it  first,  that  it  may 
please  me  the  more  at  la,  t. 


The  present  was  my  nex*   «•  xperim  nt  ol  this  kind, 
which  I  purpose  to  describe  more  at    OD^iiil  j  for  con« 


D2  WALDEN. 

venience,  patting  the  experience  of  two  years  into  one. 
As  I  have  said,  I  do  not  propose  to  write  an  ode  to  de 
jection,  but  to  brag  as  lustily  as  chanticleer  in  the  morn 
ing,  standing  on  his  roost,  if  only  to  wake  my  neigh 
bors  up. 

When  first  I  took  up  my  abode  in  the  woods,  that  is, 
began  to  spend  my  nights  as  well  as  days  there,  which, 
by  accident,  was  on  Independence  day,  or  the  fourth  of 
July,  1845,  my  house  was  not  finished  for  winter,  but 
was  merely  a  defence  against  the  rain,  without  plaster 
ing  or  chimney,  the  walls  being  of  rough  weather-stained 
boards,  with  wide  chinks,  which  made  it  cool  at  night. 
The  upright  white  hewn  studs  and  freshly  planed  door 
and  window  casings  gave  it  a  clean  and  airy  look,  espe 
cially  in  the  morning,  when  its  timbers  were  saturated 
with  dew,  so  that  I  fancied  that  by  noon  some  sweet 
gum  would  exude  from  them.  To  my  imagination  it 
retained  throughout  the  day  more  or  less  of  this  auro 
ral  character,  reminding  me  of  a  certain  house  on  a 
mountain  which  I  had  visited  the  year  before.  This 
was  an  airy  and  unplastered  cabin,  fit  to  entertain  a 
travelling  god,  and  where  a  goddess  might  trail  her  gar 
ments.  The  winds  which  passed  over  my  dwelling 
were  such  as  sweep  over  the  ridges  of  mountains, 
bearing  the  broken  strains,  or  celestial  parts  only,  of  ter 
restrial  music.  The  morning  wind  forever  blows,  the 
poem  of  creation  is  uninterrupted  ;  but  few  are  the  ears 
th.it  hear  it.  Olympus  is  but  the  outside  of  the  earth 
every  where. 

The  only  house  I  had  been  the  owner  of  before,  if  I 
except  a  boat,  was  a  tent,  which  I  used  occasionally 
when  making  excursions  in  the  summer,  and  this  is  still 
rolled  up  in  my  garret ;  but  the  boat,  after  passing  from 


WHERE    I    LIVED.  93 

hand  to  Lund,  has  gone  down  the  stream  of  time.  With 
this  more  substantial  shelter  about  me,  I  had  made  some 
progress  toward  settling  in  the  world.  This  frame,  so 
slightly  clad,  was  a  sort  of  crystallization  around  me, 
and  reacted  on  the  builder.  It  was  suggestive  somewhat 
as  a  picture  in  outlines.  I  did  not  need  to  go  out  doors 
to  take  the  air,  for  the  atmosphere  within  had  lost  none 
of  its  freshness.  It  was  not  so  much  within  doors  as 
behind  a  door  where  I  sat,  even  in  the  rainiest  weather. 
The  Harivansa  says,  "  An  abode  without  birds  is  like 
a  meat  without  seasoning."  Such  was  not  my  abode, 
for  I  found  myself  suddenly  neighbor  to  the  birds ;  not 
by  having  imprisoned  one,  but  having  caged  myself  near 
them.  I  was  not  only  nearer  to  some  of  those  which 
commonly  frequent  the  garden  and  the  orchard,  but  to 
those  wilder  and  more  thrilling  songsters  of  the  forest 
which  never,  or  rarely,  serenade  a  villager,  —  the  wood- 
thrush,  the  veery,  the  scarlet  tanager,  the  field-sparrow, 
the  whippoorwill,  and  many  others. 

I  was  seated  by  the  shore  of  a  small  pond,  about  a 
mile  and  a  half  south  of  the  village  of  Concord  and  some 
what  higher  than  it,  in  the  midst  of  an  extensive  wood 
between  that  town  and  Lincoln,  and  about  two  miles 
south  of  that  our  only  field  known  to  fame,  Concord 
Battle  Ground ;  but  I  was  so  low  in  the  woods  that  the 
opposite  shore,  half  a  mile  off,  like  the  rest,  covered  with 
wood,  was  my  most  distant  horizon.  For  the  first  week, 
whenever  I  looked  out  on  the  pond  it  impressed  me  like 
a  tarn  high  up  on  the  side  of  a  mountain,  its  bottom  far 
above  the  surface  of  other  lakes,  and,  as  the  sun  arose, 
I  saw  it  throwing  off  its  nightly  clothing  of  mist,  and 
here  and  there,  by  degrees,  its  soft  ripples  or  its  smooth 
reflecting  mrface  was  revealed,  while  the  mists,  like 


94  WALDEN. 

gnosts,  weie  stealthily  withdrawing  in  every  direction 
into  the  woods,  as  at  the  breaking  up  of  some  nocturnal 
conventicle.  The  very  dew  seemed  to  hang  upon  the 
trees  later  into  the  day  than  usual,  as  on  the  sides  of 
mountains. 

This  small  lake  was  of  most  value  as  a  neighbor  in 
the  intervals  of  a  gentle  rain  storm  in  August,  when, 
both  air  and  water  being  perfectly  still,  but  the  sky  over 
cast,  mid-afternoon  had  all  the  serenity  of  evening,  and 
the  wood-thrush  sang  around,  and  was  heard  from  shore 
to  shore.  A  lake  like  this  is  never  smoother  than  at 
such  a  time ;  and  the  clear  portion  of  the  air  above  it 
being  shallow  and  darkened  by  clouds,  the  water,  full  of 
light  and  reflections,  becomes  a  lower  heaven  itself  so 
much  the  more  important.  From  a  hill  top  near  by, 
where  the  wood  had  been  recently  cut  off,  there  was  a 
pleasing  vista  southward  across  the  pond,  through  a  wide 
indentation  in  the  hills  which  form  the  shore  there, 
where  their  opposite  sides  sloping  toward  each  other 
suggested  a  stream  flowing  out  in  that  direction  through  a 
wooded  valley,  but  stream  there  was  none.  That  way 
I  looked  between  and  over  the  near  green  hills  to  some 
distant  and  higher  ones  in  the  horizon,  tinged  with  blue. 
Indeed,  by  standing  on  tiptoe  I  could  catch  a  glimpse  of 
some  of  the  peaks  of  the  still  bluer  and  more  distant 
mountain  ranges  in  the  north-west,  those  true-blue  coins 
from  heaven's  own  mint,  and  also  of  some  portion  of  the 
village.  But  in  other  directions,  even  from  this  point,  1 
could  not  see  over  or  beyond  the  woods  which  sur 
rounded  me.  It  is  well  to  have  some  water  in  your 
neighborhood,  to  give  buoyancy  to  and  float  the  earth, 
One  value  even  of  the  smallest  well  is,  that  when  you 
look  into  it  you  see  that  earth  is  not  continent  but  insu- 


WHERE    1    LIVED.  95 

lar.  This  is  as  important  as  that  it  keeps  butter  cool 
When  I  looked  across  the  pond  from  this  peak  toward 
the  Sudbury  meadows,  which  in  time  of  flood  I  distin 
guished  elevated  perhaps  by  a  mirage  in  their  seething 
valley,  like  a  coin  in  a  basin,  all  the  earth  beyond  the 
pond  appeared  like  a  thin  crust  insulated  and  floated 
even  by  this  small  sheet  of  intervening  water,  and  I  was 
reminded  that  this  on  which  I  dwelt  was  but  dry  land. 

Though  the  view  from  my  door  was  still  more  con 
tracted,  I  did  not  feel  crowded  or  confined  in  the  least, 
There  was  pasture  enough  for  my  imagination.  The 
low  shrub-oak  plateau  to  which  the  opposite  shore  arose, 
stretched  away  toward  the  prairies  of  the  West  and  the 
steppes  of  Tartary,  affording  ample  room  for  all  the  rov 
ing  families  of  men.  "  There  are  none  happy  in  the 
world  but  beings  who  enjoy  freely  a  vast  horizon,"  — 
said  Damodara,  when  his  herds  required  new  and  larger 
pastures. 

Both  place  and  time  were  changed,  and  I  dwelt  nearer 
to  those  parts  of  the  universe  and  to  those  eras  in  his 
tory  which  had  most  attracted  me.  Where  I  lived  was 
as  far  off  as  many  a  region  viewed  nightly  by  astron 
omers.  We  are  wont  to  imagine  rare  and  delectable 
places  in  some  remote  and  more  celestial  corner  of  the, 
system,  behind  the  constellation  of  Cassiopeia's  Chair, 
far  from  noise  and  disturbance.  I  discovered  that  my 
house  actually  had  its  site  in  such  a  withdrawn,  but  for 
ever  new  and  unprofaned,  part  of  the  universe.  If  it 
were  worth  the  while  to  settle  in  those  parts  near  to  the 
Pleiades  or  the  Hyades,  to  Aldebaran  or  Altair,  then  I 
was  really  there,  or  at  an  equal  remoteness  from  the  life 
which  I  had  left  behind,  dwindled  and  twinkling  with  as 
tine  a  ray  to  my  nearest  neighbor,  and  to  be  seen  only 


36  WALDEN. 

in  moonless  nights  by  him.  Such  was  that  part  of  crea 
tion  where  I  had  squatted  ;  — 

"  There  was  a  shepherd  that  did  live, 

And  held  his  thoughts  as  high 
As  were  the  mounts  whereon  his  flocks 
Did  hourly  feed  him  by." 

What  should  we  think  of  the  shepherd's  life  if  his 
flocks  always  wandered  to  higher  pastures  than  his 
thoughts  ? 

Every  morning  was  a  cheerful  invitation  to  make  my 
JLifr  nf  nffitaJ^amiplicity,  and  I  mav  sav  innocence,  with 
Nature  herself.  I  have  been  as  sincere  a  worshipper 
of  Aurora  as  the  Greeks.  I  got  up  early  and  bathed  in 
the  pond ;  that  was  a  religious  exercise,  and  one  of  the 
best  things  which  I  did.  They  say  that  characters  were 
engraven  on  the  bathing  tub  of  king  Tching-thang 
to  this  effect :  "  Renew  thyself  completely  each  day ; 
do  it  again,  and  again,  and  forever  again."  I  can  un 
derstand  that.  Morning  brings  back  the  heroic  ages. 
I  was  as  much  affected  by  the  faint  hum  of  a  mosquito 
making  its  invisible  and  unimaginable  tour  through  my 
apartment  at  earliest  dawn,  when  I  was  sitting  with  door 
and  windows  open,  as  I  could  be  by  any  trumpet  that 
ever  sang  of  fame.  It  was  Homer's  requiem ;  itself  an 
Iliad  and  Odyssey  in  the  air,  singing  its  own  wrath  and 
wanderings.  There  was  something  cosmical  about  it ; 
a  standing  advertisement,  till  forbidden,  of  the  everlast 
ing  vigor  and  fertility  of  the  world.  The  morning, 
which  is  the  most  memorable  season  of  the  day,  is  the 
awakening  hour.  Then  there  is  least  somnolence  in  us ; 
and  for  an  hour,  at  least,  some  part  of  us  awakes  which 
slumbers  all  the  rest  of  the  day  and  night.  Little  is  to  be 


WHAT   I    LIVED    FOE.  97 

expected  of  that  day,  if  it  can  be  called  a  day,  to  which 
we  are  not  awakened  by  our  Genius,  but  by  the  mechani 
cal  nudgings  of  some  servitor,  are  not  awakened  by  our 
own  newly-acquired  force  and  aspirations  from  within, 
accompanied  by  the  undulations  of  celestial  music,  in 
stead  of  factory  bells,  and  a  fragrance  filling  the  air  — 
to  a  higher  life  than  we  fell  asleep  from ;  and  thus  the 
darkness  bear  its  fruit,  and  prove  itself  to  be  good,  no 
less  than  the  light.  That  man  who  does  not  believe 
that  each  day  contains  an  earlier,  more  sacred,  and  au 
roral  hour  than  he  has  yet  profaned,  has  despaired  of 
life,  and  is  pursuing  a  descending  and  darkening  way. 
After  a  partial  cessation  of  his  sensuous  life,  the  soul 
of  man,  or  its  organs  rather,  are  reinvigorated  each  day, 
and  his  Genius  tries  again  what  noble  life  it  can  make. 
All  memorable  events,  I  should  say,  transpire  in  morn 
ing  time  and  in  a  morning  atmosphere.  The  Ve- 
das  say,  "All  intelligences  awake  with  the  morning." 
Poetry  and  art,  and  the  fairest  and  most  memorable  of 
the  actions  of  men,  date  from  such  an  hour.  All  poets 
and  heroes,  like  Memnon,  are  the  children  of  Aurora, 
and  emit  their  music  at  sunrise.  To  him  whose  elastic 
and  vigorous  thought  keeps  pace  with  the  sun,  the  day 
is  a  perpetual  morning.  It  matters  not  what  the  clocks 
eay  or  the  attitudes  and  labors  of  men.  Morning  is 
when  I  am  awake  and  there  is  a  dawn  in  me.  Moral 
reform  is  the  effort  to  throw  off  sleep.  Why  is  it  that 
men  give  so  poor  an  account  of  their  day  if  they  have 
not  been  slumbering  ?  They  are  not  such  poor  calcula 
tors.  If  they  had  not  been  overcome  with  drowsiness 
they  would  have  performed  something.  The  millions 
are  awake  enough  for  physical  labor ;  but  only  one  in  a 
million  is  awake  enough  for  effective  intellectual  exeiv 
7 


98  WALDEN. 

tion,  only  one  in  a  hundred  millions  to  a  poetic  or  tin  ine 
life.  To  be  awake  is  to  be  alive.  I  have  never  yet 
met  a  man  who  was  quite  awake.  How  could  I  have 
looked  him  in  the  face  ? 

We  must  learn  to  reawaken  and  keep  ourselves 
awake,  not  by  mechanical  aids,  but  by  an  infinite  expec 
tation  of  the  dawn,  which  does  not  forsake  us  in  our 
soundest  sleep.  I  know  of  no  more  encouraging  fact 
than  the  unquestionable  ability  of  man  to  elevate  hie 
life  by  a  conscious  endeavor.  It  is  something  to  be  able 
to  paint  a  particular  picture,  or  to  carve  a  statue,  and  so 
to  make  a  few  objects  beautiful ;  but  it  is  far  more  glori 
ous  to  carve  and  paint  the  very  atmosphere  and  me 
dium  through  which  we  look,  which  morally  we  can  do. 
To  affect  the  quality  of  the  day,  that  is  the  highest  of 
arts.  Every  man  is  tasked  to  make  his  life,  even  in  its 
details,  worthy  of  the  contemplation  of  his  most  elevated 
and  critical  hour.  If  we  refused,  or  rather  used  up, 
such  paltry  information  as  we  get,  the  oracles  would  dis 
tinctly  inform  us  how  this  might  be  done. 
f  I  went  to  the  woods  because  I  wished  to  live  de- 
*  liberately,  to  front  only  the  essential  facts  of  life,  and 
see  if  I  could  not  learn  what  it  had  to  teach,  and  not, 
when  I  came  to  die,  discover  that  I  had  not  lived.  I 
did  not  wish  to  live  what  was  not  life,  living  is  so  dear ; 
nor  did  I  wish  to  practise  resignation,  unless  it  was  quite 
necessary/f  I  wanted  to  live  deep  and  suck  out  all  the 
marrow  of  life,  to  live  so  sturdily  and  Spartan-like  as  to 
put  to  rout  all  that  was  not  life,  to  cut  a  broad  swath  arid 
shave  close,  to  drive  life  into  a  corner,  and  reduce  it  to 
its  lowest  terms,  and,  if  it  proved  to  be  mean,  why  then 
to  get  the  whole  and  genuine  meanness  of  it,  and  publish 
its  meanness  to  the  world ;  or  if  it  were  sublime,  to 


W11AT    I    LIVED    FOE.  99 

know  it  bj»  experience,  and  be  able  to  give  a  true  ac 
count  of  it  in  my  next  excursion.  For  most  men,  it 
appears  to  me,  are  in  a  strange  uncertainty  about  ii, 
whether  it  is  of  the  devil  or  of  God,  and  have  some 
what  hastily  concluded  that  it  is  the  chief  end  of  man 
here  to  "  glorify  God  and  enjoy  him  forever." 

Still  we  live  meanly,  like  ants ;  though  the  fable  tells 
us  that  we  were  long  ago  changed  into  men ;  like  pyg 
mies  we  fight  with  cranes ;  it  is  error  upon  error,  and 
clout  upon  clout,  and  our  best  virtue  has  for  its  occasion 
a  superfluous  and  evitable  wretchedness.  Our  life  is  frit 
tered  away  by  detail.  An  honest  man  has  hardly  need 
to  count  more  than  his  ten  fingers,  or  in  extreme  cases 
he  may  add  his  ten  toes,  and  lump  the  rest.  Simplicity, 
simplicity,  simplicity !  I  say,  let  your  affairs  be  as  two 
or  three,  and  not  a  hundred  or  a  thousand ;  instead  of  a 
million  count  half  a  dozen,  and  keep  your  accounts  on 
your  thumb  nail.  In  the  midst  of  this  chopping  sea  of 
civilized  life,  such  are  the  clouds  and  storms  and  quick 
sands  and  thousand-and-one  items  to  be  allowed  for,  that  a 
man  has  to  live,  if  he  would  not  founder  and  go  to  the 
bottom  and  not  make  his  port  at  all,  by  dead  reckoning, 
and  he  must  be  a  great  calculator  indeed  who  succeeds. 
Simplify,  simplify.  Instead  of  three  meals  a  day,  if  it 
be  necessary  eat  but  one ;  instead  of  a  hundred  dishes, 
five ;  and  reduce  other  things  in  proportion.  Our  life  is 
liks  a  German  Confederacy,  made  up  of  petty  states, 
with  its  boundary  forever  fluctuating,  so  that  even  a 
German  cannot  tell  you  how  it  is  bounded  at  any  mo 
ment.  The  nation  itself,  with  all  its  so  called  internal 
improvements,  which,  by  the  way,  are  all  external  and 
Buperficial,  is  just  such  an  unwieldy  and  overgrown  es 
tablishment,  cluttered  with  furniture  and  tripped  up  by 


100  WALDEff. 

its  own  traps,  ruined  !y  luxury  and  heedless  expense, 
by  want  of  calculation  and  a  worthy  aim,  as  the  million 
households  in  the  land ;  and  the  only  cure  for  it  as  for 
them  is  in  a  rigid  economy,  a  stern  and  more  than  Spar 
tan  simplicity  of  life  and  elevation  of  purpose.  It  lives 
too  fast.  Men  think  that  it  is  essential  that  the  Nation 
have  commerce,  and  export  ice,  and  talk  through  a  tele 
graph,  and  ride  thirty  miles  an  hour,  without  a  doubt, 
whether  they  do  or  not ;  but  whether  we  should  live  like 
baboons  or  like  men,  is  a  little  uncertain.  If  we  do  not 
get  out  sleepers,  and  forge  rails,  and  devote  days  and 
nights  to  the  work,  but  go  to  tinkering  upon  our  lives  to 
improve  them,  who  will  build  railroads  ?  And  if  railroads 
are  not  built,  how  shall  we  get  to  heaven  in  season  ?  But 
if  we  stay  at  home  and  mind  our  business,  who  will  want 
railroads  ?  We  do  not  ride  on  the  railroad ;  it  rides  upon 
us.  Did  you  ever  think  what  those  sleepers  are  that 
underlie  the  railroad?  Each  one  is  a  man,  an  Irish 
man,  or  a  Yankee  man.  The  rails  are  laid  on  them,  and 
they  are  covered  with  sand,  and  the  cars  run  smoothly 
over  them.  They  are  sound  sleepers,  I  assure  you. 
And  every  few  years  a  new  lot  is  laid  down  and  run 
over ;  so  that,  if  some  have  the  pleasure  of  riding  on  a 
rail,  others  have  the  misfortune  to  be  ridden  upon. 
And  when  they  run  over  a  man  that  is  walking  in  his 
sleep,  a  supernumerary  sleeper  in  the  wrong  position, 
and  wake  him  up,  they  suddenly  stop  the  cars,  and  make 
a  hue  and  cry  about  it,  as  if  this  were  an  exception.  I 
am  glad  to  know  that  it  takes  a  gang  of  men  for  every 
five  miles  to  keep  the  sleepers  down  and  level  in  their 
beds  as  it  is,  for  this  is  a  sign  that  they  may  sometime 
get  up  again. 

Why  should  we  live  with  such  hurry  and  waste  of 


WHAT    I    LIVED    FOR.  101 

life?  "We  are  determined  to  be  starved  before  we  are 
hungry.  Men  say  that  a  stitch  in  time  saves  nine,  and 
so  they  take  a  thousand  stitches  to-day  to  save  nine  to 
morrow.  As  for  work,  we  haven't  any  of  any  conse 
quence.  We  have  the  Saint  Vitus'  dance,  and  cannot 
possibly  keep  our  heads  still.  If  I  should  only  give  a 
few  pulls  at  the  parish  bell-rope,  as  for  a  fire,  that  is,  with 
out  setting  the  bell,  there  is  hardly  a  man  on  his  farm 
in  the  outskirts  of  Concord,  notwithstanding  that  press 
of  engagements  which  was  his  excuse  so  many  times 
this  morning,  nor  a  boy,  nor  a  woman,  I  might  almost 
say,  but  would  forsake  all  and  follow  that  sound,  nol 
mainly  to  save  property  from  the  flames,  but,  if  we  wiD 
confess  the  truth,  much  more  to  see  it  burn,  since 
burn  it  must,  and  we,  be  it  known,  did  not  set  it  on  fire, 
—  or  to  see  it  put  out,  and  have  a  hand  in  it,  if  that  is 
done  as  handsomely ;  yes,  even  if  it  were  the  parish 
church  itself.  Hardly  a  man  takes  a  half  hour's  nap 
after  dinner,  but  when  he  wakes  he  holds  up  his  head 
and  asks,  "  What's  the  news  ?  "  as  if  the  rest  of  mankind 
had  stood  his  sentinels.  Some  give  directions  to  be 
waked  every  half  hour,  doubtless  for  no  other  purpose ; 
and  then,  to  pay  for  it,  they  teh1  what  they  have  dreamed. 
After  a  night's  sleep  the  news  is  as  indispensable  as  the 
breakfast.  "  Pray  tell  me  any  thing  new  that  has  hap 
pened  to  a  man  anywhere  on  this  globe," — and  he 
reads  it  over  his  coffee  and  rolls,  that  a  man  has  had  his 
eyes  gouged  out  this  morning  on  the  Wachito  River ; 
never  dreaming  the  while  that  he  lives  in  the  dark  un- 
fathomed  mammoth  cave  of  this  world,  and  has  but  the 
rudiment  of  an  eye  himself. 

For  my  part,  I  could  easily  do  without  the  post-office. 
I  think  that  there  are  very  few  important  communica- 


102  WALDEN. 

tions  made  through  it.  To  speak  critically,  I  never  re 
ceived  more  than  one  or  two  letters  in  my  life — I  wrote 
this  some  years  ago  —  that  were  worth  the  postage. 
The  penny-post  is,  commonly,  an  institution  through 
which  you  seriously  offer  a  man  that  penny  for  his 
thoughts  which  is  so  often  safely  offered  in  jest.  And 
I  am  sure  that  I  never  read  any  memorable  news  in  a 
newspaper.  If  we  read  of  one  man  robbed,  or  mur 
dered,  or  killed  by  accident,  or  one  house  burned,  or  one 
vessel  wrecked,  or  one  steamboat  blown  up,  or  one  cow 
run  over  on  the  Western  Railroad,  or  one  mad  dog 
killed,  or  one  lot  of  grasshoppers  in  the  winter,  —  we 
never  need  read  of  another.  One  is  enough.  If  you 
are  acquainted  with  the  principle,  what  do  you  care  for 
a  myriad  instances  and  applications?  To  a  philoso 
pher  all  news,  as  it  is  called,  is  gossip,  and  they  who 
edit  and  read  it  are  old  women  over  their  tea.  Yet 
not  a  few  are  greedy  after  this  gossip.  There  was 
such  a  rush,  as  I  hear,  the  other  day  at  one  of  the 
offices  to  learn  the  foreign  news  by  the  last  arrival,  that 
several  large  squares  of  plate  glass  belonging  to  the 
establishment  were  broken  by  the  pressure,  —  news 
which  I  seriously  think  a  ready  wit  might  write  a 
twelvemonth  or  twelve  years  beforehand  with  suf 
ficient  accuracy.  As  for  Spain,  for  instance,  if  you 
know  how  to  throw  in  Don  Carlos  and  the  Infanta,  and 
Don  Pedro  and  Seville  and  Granada,  from  time  to  time 
in  the  right  proportions,  —  they  may  have  changed  the 
names  a  little  since  I  saw  the  papers,  —  and  serve  up 
a  bull-fight  when  other  entertainments  fail,  it  will  be 
true  to  the  letter,  and  give  us  as  good  an  idea  of  the 
exact  state  or  ruin  of  Ihings  in  Spain  as  the  most  suc 
cinct  and  lucid  reports  under  this  head  in  the  news- 


WHAT    .    LIVED    FOR.  103 

papers :  and  as  for  England,  almost  the  last  significant 
scrap  of  news  from  that  quarter  was  the  revolution  of 
1 G49  ;  and  if  you  have  learned  the  history  of  her  crops 
for  an  average  year,  you  never  need  attend  to  that  thing 
again,  unless  your  speculations  are  of  a  merely  pecu 
niary  character.  If  one  may  judge  who  rarely  looks 
into  the  newspapers,  nothing  new  does  ever  happen  in 
foreign  parts,  a  French  revolution  not  excepted. 

What  news !  how  much  more  important  to  know 
what  that  is  which  was  never  old !  "  Kieou-he-yu 
(great  dignitary  of  the  state  of  Wei)  sent  a  man  to 
Khoung-tseu  to  know  his  news.  Khoung-tseu  caused 
the  messenger  to  be  seated  near  him,  and  questioned 
him  in  these  terms :  What  is  your  master  doing  ?  The 
messenger  answered  with  respect :  My  master  desires 
to  diminish  the  number  of  his  faults,  but  he  cannot 
come  to  the  end  of  them.  The  messenger  being  gone, 
the  philosopher  remarked  :  What  a  worthy  messenger ! 
What  a  worthy  messenger ! "  The  preacher,  instead  of 
vexing  the  ears  of  drowsy  farmers  on  their  day  of  rest 
at  the  end  of  the  week,  —  for  Sunday  is  the  fit  conclu 
sion  of  an  ill-spent  week,  and  not  t^ie  fresh  and  brave 
beginning  of  a  new  one,  —  with  this  one  other  draggle- 
tail  of  a  sermon,  should  shout  with  thundering  voice,  — 
"  Pause !  Avast !  Why  so  seeming  fast,  but  deadly 
slow?" 

Shams  and  delusions  are  esteemed  for  soundest  truths, 
while  reality  is  fabulous.  If  men  would  steadily  ob 
serve  realities  only,  and  not  allow  themselves  to  be  de 
luded,  life,  to  compare  it  with  such  things  as  we  know, 
would  be  like  a  fairy  tale  and  the  Arabian  Nights'  En 
tertainments.  If  we  respected  only  what  is  inevitable 
»n<*  has  a  right  to  be,  music  and  poetry  would  resound 


104  WALDEN. 

along  the  streets.  When  we  are  unhurried  and  wise, 
we  perceive  that  only  great  and  worthy  things  have  any 
permanent  and  absolute  existence,  —  that  petty  fears 
and  petty  pleasures  are  but  the  shadow  of  the  reality. 
This  is  always  exhilarating  and  sublime.  By  closing 
the  eyes  and  slumbering,  and  consenting  to  be  deceived 
by  shows,  men  establish  and  confirm  their  daily  life  of 
routine  and  habit  every  where,  which  still  is  built  on 
purely  illusory  foundations.  Children,  who  play  life, 
discern  its  true  law  and  relations  more  clearly  than  men, 
•who  fail  to  live  it  worthily,  but  who  think  that  they  are 
wiser  by  experience,  that  is,  by  failure.  I  have  read 
in  a  Hindoo  book,  that  "  there  was  a  king's  son,  who, 
being  expelled  in  infancy  from  his  native  city,  was 
brought  up  by  a  forester,  and,  growing  up  to  maturity 
in  that  state,  imagined  himself  to  belong  to  the  bar 
barous  race  with  which  he  lived.  One  of  his  father's 
ministers  having  discovered  him,  revealed  to  him  what 
he  was,  and  the  misconception  of  his  character  was 
removed,  and  he  knew  himself  to  be  a  prince.  So 
soul,"  continues  the  Hindoo  philosopher,  "  from  the  cir 
cumstances  in  which  it  is  placed,  mistakes  its  own  char 
acter,  until  the  truth  is  revealed  to  it  by  some  holy 
teacher,  and  then  it  knows  itself  to  be  Brahme."  I  per 
ceive  that  we  inhabitants  of  New  England  live  this 
mean  life  that  we  do  because  our  vision  does  not  pene 
trate  the  surface  of  things.  We  think  that  that  is  which 
appears  to  be.  If  a  man  should  walk  through  this 
town  and  see  only  the  reality,  where,  think  you,  would 
the  "  Mill-dam "  go  to  ?  If  he  should  give  us  an  ac 
count  of  the  realities  he  beheld  there,  we  should  not 
recognize  the  place  in  his  description.  Look  at  a 
meeting-house,  or  a  court-house,  or  a  jail,  or  a  shop,  01 


WHAT    I    LIVED    FOR.  105 

a  dwelling-house,  and  say  what  that  thing  really  is  be 
fore  a  true  gaze,  and  they  would  all  go  to  pieces  in  your 
account  of  them.  Men  esteem  truth  remote,  in  the  out 
skirts  of  the  system,  behind  the  farthest  star,  before 
Adam  and  after  the  last  man.  In  eternity  there  is  in 
deed  something  true  and  sublime.  But  all  these  times 
and  places  and  occasions  are  now  and  here.  God  him 
self  culminates  in  the  present  moment,  and  will  never 
be  more  divine  in  the  lapse  of  all  the  ages.  And  we 
are  enabled  to  apprehend  at  all  what  is  sublime  and 
noble  only  by  the  perpetual  instilling  and  drenching  of 
the  reality  that  surrounds  us.  The  universe  constantly 
and  obediently  answers  to  our  conceptions  ;  whether  we 
travel  fast  or  slow,  the  track  is  laid  for  us.  Let  us  spend 
our  lives  in  conceiving  then.  The  poet  or  the  artist 
never  yet  had  so  fair  and  noble  a  design  but  some  of 
his  posterity  at  least  could  accomplish  it. 
.  Let  us  spend  one  day  as  deliberately  as  Nature,  and 
not  be  thrown  off  the  track  by  every  nutshell  and  mos 
quito's  wing  that  falls  on  the  rails.  Let  us  rise  early 
and  fast,  or  break  fast,  gently  and  without  perturbation  ; 
let  company  come  and  let  company  go,  let  the  bells 
ring  and  the  children  cry,  —  determined  to  make  a  day 
of  it.  Why  should  we  knock  under  and  go  with  the 
stream  ?  Let  us  not  be  upset  and  overwhelmed  in  that 
terrible  rapid  and  whirlpool  called  a  dinner,  situated  in 
the  meridian  shallows.  Weather  this  danger  and  you 
are  safe,  for  the  rest  of  the  way  is  down  hill.  With 
unrelaxed  nerves,  with  morning  vigor,  sail  by  it,  look 
ing  another  way,  tied  to  the  mast  like  Ulysses.  If  the 
engine  whistles,  let  it  whistle  till  it  is  hoarse  for  its 
pains.  If  the  bell  rings,  why  should  we  run  ?  We 
will  consider  what  kind  of  music  they  are  like.  Let  ua 


106  WALDEN. 

settle  ourselves,  and  work  and  wedge  our  feet  down 
ward  through  the  mud  and  slush  of  opinion,  and  pre 
judice,  and  tradition,  and  delusion,  and  appearance,  that 
alluvion  which  covers  the  globe,  through  Paris  and  Lon 
don,  through  New  York  and  Boston  and  Concord, 
through  church  and  state,  through  poetry  and  philoso 
phy  and  religion,  till  we  come  to  a  hard  bottom  and 
rocks  in  place,  which  we  can  call  reality,  and  say,  This  is, 
and  no  mistake  ;  and  then  begin,  having  a  point  d'appui, 
below  freshet  and  frost  and  fire,  a  place  where  you 
might  found  a  wall  or  a  state,  or  set  a  lamp-post  safely, 
or  perhaps  a  gauge,  not  a  Nilometer,  but  a  Realometer, 
that  future  ages  might  know  how  deep  a  freshet  of 
shams  and  appearances  had  gathered  from  time  to  time. 
If  you  stand  right  fronting  and  fiace  to  face  to  a  fact, 
you  will  see  the  sun  glimmer  on  both  its  surfaces,  as  if 
it  were  a  cimeter,  and  feel  its  sweet  edge  dividing  you 
through  the  heart  and  marrow,  and  so  you  will  happily 
conclude  your  mortal  career.  Be  it  life  or  death,  we 
crave  only  reality.  If  we  are  really  dying,  let  us  hear 
the  rattle  in  our  throats  and  feel  cold  in  the  extremi 
ties  ;  if  we  are  alive,  let  us  go  about  our  business. 

Time  is  but  the  stream  I  go  a-fishing  in.  I  drink  at 
it ;  but  while  I  drink  I  see  the  sandy  bottom  and  detect 
how  shallow  it  is.  Its  thin  current  slides  away,  but 
eternity  remains.  I  would  drink  deeper ;  fish  in  the 
sky,  whose  bottom  is  pebbly  with  stars.  I  cannot  count 
one.  I  know  not  the  first  letter  of  the  alphabet.  I 
have  always  been  regretting  that  I  was  not  as  wise  as 
the  day  I  was  born.  The  intellect  is  a  cleaver ;  it  dis 
cerns  and  rifts  its  way  into  the  secret  of  things.  I  do 
not  wish  to  be  any  more  busy  with  my  hands  than  is 
necessary.  My  head  is  hands  and  feet.  I  feel  all  my 


WHAT    I    LIVED    FOR,  107 

best  faculties  concentrated  in  it.  My  instinci  tells  me 
that  my  head  is  an  organ  for  burrowing,  as  some  crea 
tures  use  their  snout  and  fore-paws,  and  with  it  I  would 
mine  and  burrow  my  way  through  these  hills.  I  think 
that  the  richest  vein  is  somewhere  hereabouts ;  so  by 
the  divining  rod  and  thin  rising  vapors  I  judge ;  and 
here  I  will  begin  to  mine. 


READING. 


WITH  a  little  more  deliberation  i*.  to.  choice  of  their 
pursuits,  all  men  would  perhaps  oe-jome  essentially 
students  and  observers,  for  certainly  their  nature  and 
destiny  are  interesting  to  all  alike.  In  accumulating 
property  for  ourselves  or  our  posterity,  in  founding  a 
family  or  a  state,  or  acquiring  fame  even,  we  are  mortal ; 
but  in  dealing  with  truth  we  are  immortal,  and  need 
fear  no  change  nor  accident.  The  oldest  Egyptian  or 
Hindoo  philosopher  raised  a  corner  of  the  veil  from  the 
statue  of  the  divinity ;  and  still  the  trembling  robe  re 
mains  raised,  and  I  gaze  upon  as  fresh  a  glory  as  he 
did,  since  it  was  I  in  him  that  was  then  so  bold,  and  it  is 
he  in  me  that  now  reviews  the  vision.  No  dust  has  set 
tled  on  that  robe  ;  no  time  has  elapsed  since  that  divinity 
was  revealed.  That  time  which  we  really  improve,  01 
which  is  improvable,  is  neither  past,  present,  nor  future. 
My  residence  was  more  favorable,  not  only  to 
tho aght,  but  to  serious  reading;  than  a  university  ;  and 
though  I  was  beyond  the  ran^e  of  the  ordinary  circu 
lating  library,  I  had  more  thai-,  ever  come  within  the  in- 
fluence  of  those  books  which  circulate  round  the  world, 

(108) 


READING.  109 

whose  s<mtvmces  were  first  written  on  bark,  and  are  now 
merely  copied  from  time  to  time  on  to  linen  paper. 
Says  the  poet  Mir  Camar  Uddin  Mast,  "Being  seated 
to  run  through  the  region  of  the  spiritual  world ;  I  have 
had  this  advantage  in  books.  To  be  intoxicated  by  a 
single  glass  of  wine ;  I  have  experienced  this  pleasure 
when  I  have  drunk  the  liquor  of  the  esoteric  doctrines.'* 
I  kept  Homer's  Iliad  on  my  table  through  the  summer, 
though  I  looked  at  his  page  only  now  and  then.  Inces 
sant  labor  with  my  hands,  at  first,  for  I  had  my  house 
to  finish  and  my  beans  to  ho€  at  the  same  time,  made 
more  study  impossible.  Yet  I  sustained  myself  by  the 
prospect  of  such  reading  in  future.  I  read  one  or  two 
shallow  books  of  travel  in  the  intervals  of  my  work, 
till  that  employment  made  me  ashamed  of  myself,  and 
I  asked  where  it  was  then  that  /  lived. 

The  student  may  read  Homer  or  ^Eschylus  in  the 
Greek  without  danger  of  dissipation  or  luxuriousness, 
for  it  implies  that  he  in  some  measure  emulate  their 
heroes,  and  consecrate  morning  hours  to  their  pages. 
The  heroic  books,  even  if  printed  in  the  character  of 
our  mother  tongue,  will  always  be  in  a  language  dead 
to  degenerate  times;  and  we  must  laboriously  seek  the 
meaning  of  each  word  and  line,  conjecturing  a  larger 
sense  than  common  use  permits  out  of  what  wisdom 
and  valor  and  generosity  we  have.  The  modern  cheap 
and  fertile  press,  with  all  its  translations,  has  done  little 
to  bring  us  nearer  to  the  heroic  writers  of  antiquity. 
They  seem  as  solitary,  and  the  letter  in  which  they  are 
printed  as  rare  and  curious,  as  ever.  It  is  worth  the 
expense  of  youthful  days  and  costly  hours,  if  you  learn 
only  some  words  of  an  ancient  language,  which  are 
raised  out  of  (he  trivialnets  of  thu  alreet,  to  be  per- 


110  WALDEN. 

petual  suggestions  and  provocations.  It  is  not  in  vain  that 
the  farmer  remembers  and  repeats  the  few  Latin  words 
which  he  has  heard.  Men  sometimes  speak  as  if  the 
study  of  the  classics  would  at  length  make  way  for  more 
modern  and  practical  studies ;  but  the  adventurous  stu 
dent  will  always  study  classics,  in  whatever  language  they 
may  be  written  and  however  ancient  they  may  be.  For 
what  are  the  classics  but  the  noblest  recorded  thoughts 
of  man  ?  They  are  the  only  oracles  which  are  not  de 
cayed,  and  there  are  such  answers  to  the  most  modern 
inquiry  in  them  as  Delphi  and  Dodona  never  gave. 
We  might  as  well  omit  to  study  Nature  because  she  is 
old.  To  read  well,  that  is,  to  read  true  books  in  a  true 
spirit,  is  a  noble  exercise,  and  one  that  will  task  the 
reader  more  than  any  exercise  which  the  customs  of  the 
day  esteem.  It  requires  a  training  such  as  the  athletes 
underwent,  the  steady  intention  almost  of  the  whole 
life  to  this  object.  Books  must  be  read  as  deliberately 
and  reservedly  as  they  were  written.  It  is  not  enough 
even  to  be  able  to  speak  the  language  of  that  nation  by 
which  they  are  written,  for  there  is  a  memorable 
interval  between  the  spoken  and  the  written  lan 
guage,  the  language  heard  and  the  language  read. 
The  one  is  commonly  transitory,  a  sound,  a  tongue, 
a  dialect  merely,  almost  brutish,  and  we  learn  it  un 
consciously,  like  the  brutes,  of  our  mothers.  The 
other  is  the  maturity  and  experience  of  that ;  if  that  is 
our  mother  tongue,  this  is  our  father  tongue,  a  reserved 
and  select  expression,  too  significant  to  be  heard  by  the 
ear,  which  we  must  be  born  again  in  order  to  speak.  The 
crowds  of  men  who  merely  spoke  the  Greek  and  Latin 
tongues  in  the  middle  ages  were  not  entitled  by  the  ac 
cident  of  birth  to  read  the  works  of  genius  written  in 


READING.  Ill 

those  languages ;  for  these  were  not  written  in  that 
Greek  or  Latin  which  they  knew,  but  in  the  select  lan 
guage  of  literature.  They  had  not  learned  the  nobler 
dialects  of  Greece  and  Rome,  but  the  very  materials  on 
which  they  were  written  were  waste  paper  to  them, 
and  they  prized  instead  a  cheap  contemporary  literature. 
But  when  the  several  nations  of  Europe  had  acquired 
distinct  though  rude  written  languages  of  their  own, 
sufficient  for  the  purposes  of  their  rising  literatures, 
then  first  learning  revived,  and  scholars  were  enabled  to 
discern  from  that  remoteness  the  treasures  of  antiquity. 
What  the  Roman  and  Grecian  multitude  could  not  hear, 
after  the  lapse  of  ages  a  few  scholars  read,  and  a  few 
scholars  only  are  still  reading  it. 

However  much  we  may  admire  the  orator's  occasional 
bursts  of  eloquence,  the  noblest  written  words  are  com 
monly  as  far  behind  or  above  the  fleeting  spoken  lan 
guage  as  the  firmament  with  its  stars  is  behind  the 
clouds.  There  are  the  stars,  and  they  who  can  may 
read  them.  The  astronomers  forever  comment  on  and 
observe  them.  They  are  not  exhalations  like  our  daily 
colloquies  and  vaporous  breath.  What  is  called  elo 
quence  in  the  forum  is  commonly  found  to  be  rhetoric 
in  the  study.  The  orator  yields  to  the  inspiration  of  a 
transient  occasion,  and  speaks  to  the  mob  before  him, 
10  those  who  can  hear  him  ;  but  the  writer,  whose  more 
equable  life  is  his  occasion,  and  who  would  be  distracted 
by  the  event  and  the  crowd  which  inspire  the  orator, 
speaks  to  the  intellect  and  heart  of  mankind,  to  all  in 
any  age  who  can  understand  him. 

No  wonder  that  Alexander  carried  the  Iliad  with  him 
on  his  expeditions  in  a  precious  casket.  A  written 
word  is  the  choicest  of  relics.  It  is  something  at  once 


112  WALDEN. 

more  intimate  with  us  and  more  universal  than  an^ 
other  work  of  art.  It  is  the  work  of  art  nearest  to  life 
itself.  It  may  be  translated  into  every  language,  and  not 
only  be  read  but  actually  breathed  from  all  human 
lips ;  —  not  be  represented  on  canvas  or  in  marble  only, 
but  be  carved  out  of  the  breath  of  life  itself.  The  sym 
bol  of  an  ancient  man's  thought  becomes  a  modern 
m ;in's  speech.  Two  thousand  summers  have  imparted 
to  the  monuments  of  Grecian  literature,  as  to  her  mar 
bles,  only  a  maturer  golden  and  autumnal  tint,  for  they 
have  carried  their  own  serene  and  celestial  atmosphere 
into  all  lands  to  protect  them  against  the  corrosion  of 
time.  Books  are  the  treasured  wealth  of  the  world 
and  the  fit  inheritance  of  generations  and  nations. 
Books,  the  oldest  and  the  best,  stand  naturally  and 
rightfully  on  the  shelves  of  every  cottage.  They  have 
no  cause  of  their  own  to  plead,  but  while  they  enlighten 
and  sustain  the  reader  his  common  sense  will  not  refuse 
them.  Their  authors  are  a  natural  and  irresistible 
aristocracy  in  every  society,  and,  more  than  kings  or 
emperors,  exert  an  influence  on  mankind.  When  the 
illiterate  and  perhaps  scornful  trader  has  earned  by  en 
terprise  and  industry  his  coveted  leisure  and  independ 
ence,  and  is  admitted  to  the  circles  of  wealth  and  fash 
ion,  he  turns  inevitably  at  last  to  those  still  higher  but 
yet  inaccessible  circles  of  intellect  and  genius,  and  is 
sensible  only  of  the  imperfection  of  his  culture  and  the 
vanity  and  insufficiency  of  all  his  riches,  and  further 
proves  his  good  sense  by  the  pains  which  he  takes  to 
secure  for  his  children  that  intellectual  culture  whose 
want  he  so  keenly  feels ;  and  thus  it  is  that  he  becomes 
the  founder  of  a  family. 

Tho.se   who   have  not   learned    to  read  rhe  ancient 


READING.  113 

classics  in  the  language  in  which  they  were  written 
must  have  a  very  imperfect  knowledge  of  the  history 
of  the  human  race ;  for  it  is  remarkable  that  no  tran 
script  of  them  has  ever  been  made  into  any  modern 
tongue,  unless  our  civilization  itself  may  be  regarded  as 
such  a  transcript.  Homer  has  never  yet  been  printed 
in  English,  nor  JEschylus,  nor  Virgil  even,  —  works  as 
refined,  as  solidly  done,  and  as  beautiful  almost  as  the 
morning  itself;  for  later  writers,  say  what  we  will  of 
their  genius,  have  rarely,  if  ever,  equalled  the  elaborate 
beauty  and  finish  and  the  lifelong  and  heroic  literary 
labors  of  the  ancients.  They  only  talk  of  forgetting 
them  who  never  knew  them.  It  will  be  soon  enough 
to  forget  them  when  we  have  the  learning  and  the 
genius  which  will  enable  us  to  attend  to  and  appreciate 
them.  That  age  will  be  rich  indeed  when  those  relics 
which  we  call  Classics,  and  the  still  older  and  more  than 
classic  but  even  less  known  Scriptures  of  the  nations, 
shall  have  still  further  accumulated,  when  the  Vaticans 
shall  be  filled  with  Vedas  and  Zendavestas  and  Bibles, 
with  Homers  and  Dantes  and  Shakspeares,  and  all  the 
centuries  to  come  shall  have  successively  deposited  their 
trophies  in  the  forum  of  the  world.  -By  such  a  pile  we 
may  hope  to  scale  heaven  at  last. 

The  works  of  the  great  poets  have  never  yet  been 
read  by  mankind,  for  only  great  poets  can  read  them. 
They  have  only  been  read  as  the  multitude  read  the 
stars,  at  most  astrologically,  not  astronomically.  Most 
men  have  learned  to  read  to  serve  a  paltry  convenience, 
as  they  have  learned  to  cipher  in  order  to  keep  ac 
counts  and  not  be  cheated  in  trade ;  but  of  reading  as 
a  noble  intellectual  exercise  they  know  little  or  nothing; 
yet  this  only  is  reading,  in  a  high  sense,  not  that  which 
8 


114  WAlDEN. 

lulls  us  as  a  luxury  and  suffers  the  nobler  faculties  to 
sleep  the  while,  but  what  we  have  to  stand  on  tip 
toe  to  read  and  devote  our  most  alert  and  wakeful 
hours  to. 

I  think  that  having  learned  our  letters  we  should  read 
the  best  that  is  in  literature,  and  not  be  forever  repeat 
ing  our  a  b  abs,  and  words  of  one  syllable,  in  the  fourth 
or  fifth  classes,  sitting  on  the  lowest  and  foremost  form 
all  our  lives.  Most  men  are  satisfied  if  they  read  or 
hear  read,  and  perchance  have  been  convicted  by  the 
wisdom  of  one  good  book,  the  Bible,  and  for  the  rest  of 
their  lives  vegetate  and  dissipate  their  faculties  in  what 
is  called  easy  reading.  There  is  a  work  in  several 
volumes  in  our  Circulating  Library  entitled  Little  Read 
ing,  which  I  thought  referred  to  a  town  of  that  name 
which  I  had  not  been  to.  There  are  those  who,  like 
cormorants  and  ostriches,  can  digest  all  sorts  of  this, 
even  after  the  fullest  dinner-  of  meats  and  vegetables, 
for  they  suffer  nothing  to  be  wasted.  If  others  are  the 
machines  to  provide  this  provender,  they  are  the  ma 
chines  to  read  it.  They  read  the  nine  thousandth  tale 
about  Zebulon  and  Sephronia,  and  how  they  loved  as 
none  had  ever  loved  before,  and  neither  did  the  course 
of  their  true  love  run  smooth,  —  at  any  rate,  how  it  did 
run  and  stumble,  and  get  up  again  and  go  on  !  how 
some  poor  unfortunate  got  up  on  to  a  steeple,  who  had 
better  never  have  gone  up  as  far  as  the  belfry ;  and 
then,  having  needlessly  got  him  up  there,  the  happy  nov 
elist  rings  the  bell  for  all  the  world  to  come  together  and 
hear,  O  dear !  how  he  did  get  down  again !  For  my 
part,  I  think  that  they  had  better  metamorphose  all  such 
*:  spiring  heroes  of  universal  noveldom  into  man  weather- 
as  they  used  to  put  heroes  among  the  constella- 


READING.  115 

tions,  and  let  them  swing  round  there  till  they  are  rusty, 
and  not  come  down  at  all  to  bother  honest  men  with 
their  pranks.  The  next  time  the  novelist  rings  the  bell 
I  will  not  stir  though  the  meeting-house  burn  down 
"The  Skip  of  the  Tip-Toe-Hop,  a  Romance  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  by  the  celebrated  author  of  '  Tittle-Tol- 
Tan,' to  appear  in  monthly  parts;  a  great  rush;  don't 
all  come  together."  All  this  they  read  with  saucer 
eyes,  and  erect  and  primitive  curiosity,  and  with  un 
wearied  gizzard,  whose  corrugations  even  yet  need  no 
sharpening,  just  as  some  little  four-year-old  bencher  his 
two-cent  gilt-covered  edition  of  Cinderella,  —  without 
any  improvement,  that  I  can  see,  in  the  pronunciation, 
or  accent,  or  emphasis,  or  any  more  skill  in  extracting 
or  inserting  the  moral.  The  result  is  dulness  of  sight, 
a  stagnation  of  the  vital  circulations,  and  a  general  de- 
liquium  and  sloughing  off  of  all  the  intellectual  facul 
ties.  This  sort  of  gingerbread  is  baked  daily  and  more 
sedulously  than  pure  wheat  or  rye-and-Indian  in  almost 
every  oven,  and  finds  a  surer  market. 

The  best  books  are  not  read  even  by  those  who  are 
called  good  readers.  What  does  our  Concord  culture 
amount  to  ?  There  is  in  this  town,  with  a  very  few  ex 
ceptions,  no  taste  for  the  best  or  for  very  good  books  even 
in  English  literature,  whose  words  all  can  read  and 
spell.  Even  the  college-bred  and  so  called  liberally 
educated  men  here  and  elsewhere  have  really  little  or 
no  acquaintance  with  the  English  classics ;  and  as  for 
the  recorded  wisdom  of  mankind,  the  ancient  classics 
and  Bibles,  which  are  accessible  to  all  who  will  know 
of  them,  there  are  the  feeblest  efforts  any  where  made 
to  become  acquainted  with  them.  I  know  a  woodchop- 
per,  of  middle  age,  who  takes  a  French  paper,  not  for 


116  WALDEN. 

news  as  he  says,  for  he  is  above  that,  but  to  "ke^p 
himself  in  practice,"  he  being  a  Canadian  by  birth  ;  and 
when  I  ask  him  what  he  considers  the  best  thing  he  can 
do  in  this  world,  he  says,  beside  this,  to  keep  up  and 
add  to  his  English.  This  is  about  as  much  as  the  col 
lege  bred  generally  do  or  aspire  to  do,  and  they  take  an 
English  paper  for  the  purpose.  One  who  has  just 
come  from  reading  perhaps  one  of  the  best  English 
books  will  h'nd  how  many  with  whom  he  can  converse 
about  it  ?  Or  suppose  he  comes  from  reading  a  Greek 
or  Latin  classic  in  the  original,  whose  praises  are  fa 
miliar  even  to  the  so  called  illiterate ;  he  will  find  no 
body  at  all  to  speak  to,  but  must  keep  silence  about  it. 
Indeed,  there  is  hardly  the  professor  in  our  colleges, 
who,  if  he  has  mastered  the  difficulties  of  the  language, 
has  proportionally  mastered  the  difficulties  of  the  wit 
and  poetry  of  a  Greek  poet,  and  has  any  sympathy  to 
impart  to  the  alert  and  heroic  reader ;  and  as  for  the 
sacred  Scriptures,  or  Bibles  of  mankind,  who  in  this 
town  can  tell  me  even  their  titles  ?  Most  men  do  not 
know  that  any  nation  but  the  Hebrews  have  had  a 
scripture.  A  man,  any  man,  will  go  considerably  out 
of  his  way  to  pick  up  a  silver  dollar ;  but  here  are 
golden  words,  which  the  wisest  men  of  antiquity  have 
uttered,  and  whose  worth  the  wise  of  every  succeeding 
age  have  assured  us  of;  —  and  yet  we  learn  to  read  only 
as  far  as  Easy  Reading,  the  primers  and  class-books, 
and  when  we  leave  school,  the  "  Little  Reading,"  and 
story  books,  which  are  for  boys  and  beginners ;  and  our 
reading,  our  conversation  and  thinking,  are  all  on  a  very 
low  level,  worthy  only  of  pygmies  and  manikins. 

I  aspire  to  be  acquainted  with  wiser  men  than  tnis 
our  Concord  soil  has  produced,  whose  names  are  hardly 


READING.  1 1  7 

known  here.  Or  shall  I  hear  the  name  of  Plato  and 
never  read  his  book  ?  As  if  Plato  were  my  townsman 
and  I  never  saw  him,  —  my  next  neighbor  and  I  never 
heard  him  speak  or  attended  to  the  wisdom  of  his  words. 
But  how  actually  is  it?  His  Dialogues,  which  contain 
what  was  immortal  in  him,  lie  on  the  next  shelf,  and 
yet  I  never  read  them.  We  are  under-bred  and  low 
lived  and  illiterate ;  and  in  this  respect  I  confess  I  do 
not  make  any  very  broad  distinction  between  the  illher- 
ateness  of  my  townsman  who  cannot  read  at  all,  and 
the  illiterateness  of  him  who  has  learned  to  read  only 
what  is  for  children  and  feeble  intellects.  We  should 
be  as  good  as  the  worthies  of  antiquity,  but  partly  by 
first  knowing  how  good  they  were.  We  are  a  race  of 
tit-men,  and  soar  but  little  higher  in  our  intellectual 
flights  than  the  columns  of  the  daily  paper. 

It  is  not  all  books  that  are  as  dull  as  their  readers. 
There  are  probably  words  addressed  to  our  condition 
exactly,  which,  if  we  could  really  hear  and  under 
stand,  would  be  more  salutary  than  the  morning  or 
the  spring  to  our  lives,  and  possibly  put  a  new  aspect 
on  the  face  of  things  for  us.  How  many  a  man  has 
dated  a  new  era  in  his  life  from  the  reading  of  a 
book.  The  book  exists  for  us  perchance  which  will 
explain  our  miracles  and  reveal  new  ones.  The  at 
present  unutterable  things  we  may  find  somewhere  ut 
tered.  These  same  questions  that  disturb  and  puzzle 
and  confound  us  have  in  their  turn  occurred  to  all 
the  wise  men  ;  not  one  has  been  omitted ;  and  each  has 
answered  them,  according  to  his  ability,  by  his  words 
and  his  life.  Moreover,  with  wisdom  we  shall  learn 
liberality.  The  solitary  hired  man  on  a  farm  in  the 
outskirts  of  Concord,  who  has  had  his  second  birth  and 


118  WALDEN. 

peculiar  religious  experience,  and  is  driven  as  he  be 
lieves  into  silent  gravity  and  exclusiveness  by  his  faith 
may  think  it  is  not  true ;  but  Zoroaster,  thousands  of 
years  ago,  travelled  the  same  road  and  had  the  samo 
experience  ;  but  he,  being  wise,  knew  it  to  be  universal 
and  treated  his  neighbors  accordingly,  and  is  even  s 
to  have  invented  and  established  worship  among 
Let  him  humbly  commune  with  Zoroaster  tnerj,  and 
through  the  liberalizing  influence  of  all  the  worthies, 
with  Jesus  Christ  himself,  and  let  "  our  church ''  go  bj 
the  board. 

"We  boast  that  we  belong  to  the  nineteenth  centum 
and  are  making  the  most  rapid  strides  ot  any  nation 
But  consider  how  little  this  village  does  tor  its  own  cul 
ture.  I  do  not  wish  to  flatter  n»y  townsmen,  nor  to  b« 
flattered  by  them,  for  that  will  not  advance  either  of  us. 
We  need  to  be  provoked, — goaded  like  oxen,  as  we  are, 
into  a  trot.  We  have  a  comparatively  decent  system 
of  common  schools,  schools  for  infants  only ;  but  except 
ing  the  half-starved  Lyceum  in  the  winter,  and  latterly 
the  puny  beginning  of  a  library  suggested  by  the  state, 
no  school  for  ourselves.  We  spend  more  on  almost 
any  article  of  bodily  aliment  or  ailment  than  on  oar 
mental  aliment.  It  is  time  that  we  had  uncommon 
schools,  that  we  did  not  leave  off  our  education  when 
we  begin  to  be  men  and  women.  It  is  time  that 
villages  were  universities,  and  their  elder  inhabitants 
the  fellows  of  universities,  with  leisure  —  if  they  are 
indeed  so  well  off — to  pursue  liberal  studies  the  rest 
of  their  lives.  Shall  the  world  be  confined  tc  one  Paris 
or  one  Oxford  forever.''  Cannot  student?  be  boarded 
here  and  get  a  liber?*!  education  under  the  skies  of 
Concord?  Can  we  not  hire  some  Abelard  to  lecture  to 


READING.  119 

ns?  Alas  !  what  with  foddering  the  cattle  and  tending 
the  store,  we  are  kept  from  school  too  long,  and  our 
education  is  sadly  neglected.  In  this  country,  the  vil 
lage  should  in  some  respects  take  the  place  of  the 
nobleman  of  Europe.  It  should  be  f  the  patron  of  the 
fine  arts.  It  is  rich  enough.  It  wants  only  the  mag 
nanimity  and  refinement.  It  can  spend  money  enough 
on  such  things  as  farmers  and  traders  value,  but  it  is 
thought  Utopian  to  propose  spending  money  for  things 
which  more  intelligent  men  know  to  be  of  far  more 
worth.  This  town  has  spent  seventeen  thousand  dol 
lars  on  a  town-house,  thank  fortune  or  politics,  but 
probably  it  will  not  spend  so  much  on  living  wit,  the 
true  meat  to  put  into  that  shell,  in  a  hundred  years. 
The  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  dollars  annually  sub 
scribed  for  a  Lyceum  in  the  winter  is  better  spent  than 
any  other  equal  sum  raised  in  the  town.  If  we  live  in 
the  nineteenth  century,  why  should  we  not  enjoy  the 
advantages  which  the  nineteenth  century  offers  ?  Why 
should  our  life  be  in  any  respect  provincial  ?  If  we 
will  read  newspapers,  why  not  skip  the  gossip  of  Bos 
ton  and  take  the  best  newspaper  in  the  world  at  once  ? 

—  not  be  sucking  the  pap  of  "  neutral  family "  papers, 
or  browsing  "  Olive-Branches"  here  in  New  England. 
Let  the  reports  of  all  the  learned  societies  come  to  us, 
and  we  will  see  if  they  know  any  thing.     Why  should 
we  leave  it  to  Harper  &  Brothers  and  Redding  &  Co. 
to  select  our  reading  ?     As  the  nobleman  of  cultivated 
taste  surrounds  himself  with  whatever  conduces  to  hia 
culture,  —  genius  —  learning — wit  —  books  — paintings 

—  statuary  —  music  —  philosophical  instruments,  and 
the  like  ;  so  let  the  village  do,  —  not  stop  short  at  a 
pedagogue,  a  parson,  a  sexton,  a  parish  library,  and 


120  WALDEN. 

three  selectmen,  because  our  pilgrim  forefathers  got 
through  a  cold  winter  once  on  a  bleak  rock  with  these. 
To  act  collectively  is  according  to  the  spirit  of  our  in 
stitutions  ;  and  I  am  confident  that,  as  our  circumstances 
are  more  flourishing,  our  means  are  greater  than  the 
nobleman's.  New  England  can  hire  all  the  wise  men 
in  the  world  to  come  and  teach  her,  and  board  them 
round  the  while,  and  not  be  provincial  at  all.  That  is 
the  uncommon  school  we  want.  Instead  of  noblemen, 
let  us  have  noble  villages  of  men.  If  it  is  necessary, 
omit  one  bridge  over  the  river,  go  round  a  little  there, 
and  throw  one  arch  at  least  over  the  darker  gulf  of 
ignorance  which  surrounds  us. 


SOUNDS. 


BUT  while  we  are  confined  to  books,  though  the  most 
select  and  classic,  arid  read  only  particular  written  lan 
guages,  which  are  themselves  but  dialecis  and  provin 
cial,  we  are  in  danger  of  forgetting  the  language  which 
all  things  and  events  speak  without  metaphor,  which 
alone  is  copious  and  standard.  Much  is  published,  but 
little  printed.  The  rays  which  stream  through  the 
shutter  will  be  no  longer  remembered  w^-en  the  shut 
ter  is  wholly  removed.  No  method  nor  discipline 
can  supersede  the  necessity  of  being-  forever  on  the 
alert.  What  is  a  course  of  history  or  philosophy,  or 
poetry,  no  matter  how  well  selected,  or  the  best  society, 
or  the  most  admirable  routine  of  life,  compared  with  the 
discipline  of  looking  alwayn  at  what  is  to  be  seen? 
Will  you  be  a  reader,  a  student  merely,  or  a  seer  ? 
Read  your  fate,  see  what  is  before  you,  and  walk  on  into 
futurity. 

I  did  not  read  books  the  first  summer;  I  hoed  beans. 
Nay,  I  often  did  better  than  this.  There  were  times 
when  1  could  not  afford  to  sacrifice  the  bloom  of  the 
present  moment  to  any  work,  whether  of  the  head  or 

(121) 


122  WALDEN. 

hands.  I  love  a  broad  margin  to  my  life.  Sometimes, 
in  a  summer  morning,  having  taken  my  accustomed 
bath,  I  sat  in  my  sunny  doorway  from  sunrise  till  noon, 
rapt  in  a  revery,  amidst  the  pines  and  hickories  and 
sumachs,  in  undisturbed  solitude  and  stillness,  while 
the  birds  sang  around  or  flitted  noiseless  through  the 
house,  until  by  the  sun  falling  in  at  my  west  window, 
or  the  noise  of  some  traveller's  wagon  on  the  distant 
highway,  I  was  reminded  of  the  lapse  of  time.  I  grew 
in  those  seasons  like  corn  in  the  night,  and  they  were 
far  better  than  any  work  of  the  hands  would  have 
been.  They  were  not  time  subtracted  from  my  life, 
but  so  much  over  and  above  my  usual  allowance.  I 
realized  what  the  Orientals  mean  by  contemplation  and 
the  forsaking  of  works.  For  the  most  part,  I  minded 
riot  how  the  hours  went.  The  day  advanced  as  if  to 
light  some  work  of  mine ;  it  was  morning,  and  lo,  now 
it  is  evening,  and  nothing  memorable  is  accomplished. 
Instead  of  singing  like  the  birds,  I  silently  smiled  at  my 
incessant  good  fortune.  As  the  sparrow  had  its  trill, 
sitting  on  the  hickory  before  my  door,  so  had  I  my 
chuckle  or  suppressed  warble  which  he  might  hear  out 
of  my  nest.  My  days  were  not  days  of  the  week, 
bearing  the  stamp  of  any  heathen  deity,  nor  were  they 
minced  into  hours  and  fretted  by  the  ticking  of  a  clock ; 
for  I  lived  like  the  Puri  Indians,  of  whom  it  is  said 
that  "  for  yesterday,  to-day,  and  to-morrow  they  have 
only  one  word,  and  they  express  the  variety  of  mean 
ing  by  pointing  backward  for  yesterday,  forward  for  to 
morrow,  and  overhead  for  the  passing  day."  This  was 
sheer  idleness  to  my  fellow-townsmen,  no  doubt ;  but  if 
the  birds  and  flowers  had  tried  me  by  their  stan 
dard,  I  should  pot  have  been  found  wanting.  A  man 


SOUNBS  123 

must  find  hid  occasions  in  himself,  it  is  true.  The 
natural  day  is  very  calm,  and  will  hardly  reprove  hid 
indolence. 

I  had  this  advantage,  at  least,  in  my  mode  of  lif°,  ov<?  • 
those  who  were  obliged  to  look  abroad  for  airurement, 
to  society  and  the  theatre,  that  my  life  itself  was  be 
come  my  amusement  and  never  ceased  to  be  novel.  I*> 
was  a  drama  of  many  scenes  and  without  an  end.  It 
we  were  always  indeed  getting  our  living,  and  regulal 
ing  our  li^es  according  to  the  last  and  best  mode  we  ha? 
learned,  we  should  never  be  troubled  with  ennui.  Fol 
low  your  gerius  closely  enough,  and  it  will  not  fail  to 
show  you  a  fresh  prospect  every  hour.  Housework 
was  a  pleasant  pastime.  When  my  floor  was  dirty,  I 
rose  early,  and,  setting  all  my  furniture  out  of  doors  oc 
the  grass,  bed  and  bed-stead  making  but  one  budget 
dashed  water  on  the  floor,  and  sprinkled  white  sand 
from  the  pond  on  it,  and  then  witli  a  broom  scrubbed 
it  clean  and  white ;  and  by  the  time  the  villagers  had 
broken  their  fast  the  morning  sun  had  dried  my  house 
sufficiently  to  allow  me  to  move  in  again,  and  my  medi 
tations  were  almost  uninterrupted.  It  was  pleasant  tc 
see  my  whole  household  effects  out  on  the  grass,  mak- 
in  $  a  little  pile  like  a  gypsy's  pack,  and  my  three 
legged  table,  from  which  I  did  not  remove  the  books* 
and  pen  and  ink,  standing  amid  the  pines  and  hickories 
They  seemed  glad  to  get  out  themselves,  and  as  if  un 
willing  to  be  brought  in.  I  was  sometimes  tempted  tc 
stretch  an  awning  over  them  and  take  my  seat  there 
It  wa"s  worth  the  while  to  see  the  sun  shine  on  these 
things,  and  hear  the  free  wind  blow  on  them ;  so  much 
more  interesting  most  familiar  objects  look  out  of 
doors  than  in  the  house.  A  bird  sits  on  the  next  bough 


1 24  WALDEN. 

life-everlasting  grows  under  the  table,  and  blackberry 
vines  run  round  its  legs ;  pine  cones,  chestnut  burs,  and 
strawberry  leaves  are  strewn  about.  It  looked  as  if 
this  was  the  way  these  forms  came  to  be  transferred  to 
our  furniture,  to  tables,  chairs,  and  bedsteads,  —  because 
they  once  stood  in  their  midst. 

My  house  was  on  the  side  of  a  hill,  immediately  on 
Ihe  edge  of  the  larger  wood,  in  the  midst  of  a  young 
forest  of  pitch  pines  and  hickories,  and  half  a  dozen 
rods  from  the  pond,  to  which  a  narrow  footpath  led 
down  the  hill.  In  my  front  yard  grew  the  strawberry, 
blackberry,  and  life-everlasting,  johnswort  and  golden- 
rod,  shrub-oaks  and  sand-cherry,  blueberry  and  ground 
nut.  Near  the  end  of  May,  the  sand-cherry,  (cerasus 
pumila,)  adorned  the  sides  of  the  path  with  its  delicate 
flowers  arranged  in  umbels  cylindrically  about  its  short 
stems,  which  last,  in  the  fall,  weighed  down  with  good 
sized  and  handsome  cherries,  fell  over  in  wreaths  like 
rays  on  every  side.  I  tasted  them  out  of  compliment 
to  Nature,  though  they  were  scarcely  palatable.  The 
sumach,  (rhus  glabra,)  grew  luxuriantly  about  the  house, 
pushing  up  through  the  embankment  which  I  had  made, 
and  growing  five  or  six  feet  the  first  season.  Its  broad 
pinnate  tropical  leaf  was  pleasant  though  strange  to 
look  on.  The  large  buds,  suddenly  pushing  out  late  in 
the  spring  from  dry  sticks  which  had  seemed  to  be 
dea:l,  developed  themselves  as  by  magic  into  graceful 
green  and  tender  boughs,  an  inch  in  diameter  ;  and 
sometimes,  as  I  sat  at  my  window,  so  heedlessly  did 
they  grow  and  tax  their  weak  joints,  I  heard  a  fresh 
and  tender  bough  suddenly  fall  like  a  fan  to  the  ground, 
when  there  was  not  a  breath  of  air  stirring,  broken  off 
by  its  own  weight.  In  August,  the  large  masses  of 


SOUNDS.  125 

berries,  which,  when  in  flower,  had  attracted  many  wild 
bees,  gradually  assumed  their  bright  velvety  crimson 
hue,  and  by  their  weight  again  bent  down  ard  broke  the 
tender  limbs. . 


As  I  sit  at  my  window  this  summer  afternoon,  hawks 
are  circling  about  my  clearing;  the  tantivy  of  wild 
pigeons,  flying  by  twos  and  threes  athwart  my  view,  or 
perching  restless  on  the  white-pine  boughs  behind  my 
house,  gives  a  voice  to  the  air ;  a  fishhawk  dimples  the 
glassy  surface  of  the  pond  and  brings  up  a  fish ;  a  mink 
steals  out  of  the  marsh  before  my  door  and  seizes  a 
frog  by  the  shore  ;  the  sedge  is  bending  under  the  weight 
of  the  reed-birds  flitting  hither  and  thither ;  and  for  the 
last  half  hour  I  have  heard  the  rattle  of  railroad  cars, 
now  dying  away  and  then  reviving  like  the  beat  of  a 
partridge,  conveying  travellers  from  Boston  to  the 
country.  For  I  did  not  live  so  out  of  the  world  as  that 
boy,  who,  as  I  hear,  was  put  out  to  a  farmer  in  the  east 
part  of  the  town,  but  ere  long  ran  away  and  came  home 
again,  quite  down  at  the  heel  and  homesick.  He 
had  never  seen  such  a  dull  and  out-of-the-way  place ; 
the  folks  were  all  gone  off;  why,  you  couldn't  even  hear 
the  whistle  !  I  doubt  if  there  is  such  a  place  in  Mas 
sachusetts  now :  — 

"  In  truth,  our  village  has  become  a  butt 
For  one  of  those  fleet  railroad  shafts,  and  o'er 
Our  peaceful  plain  its  soothing  sound  is  —  Concord  " 

The  Fitchburg  Railroad  touches  the  pond  about  a 
hundred  rods  south  of  where  I  dwell.  I  usually  go 
to  the  village  along  its  causeway,  and  am,  as  it  were, 


126  WALDEN. 

related  to  society  by  this  link.  The,  men  on  the  freight 
trains,  who  go  over  the  whole  length  of  the  road,  bow 
to  me  as  to  an  old  acquaintance,  they  pass  me  so  often, 
and  apparently  they  take  me  for  an  employee  ;  and  so  I 
am.  I  too  would  fain  be  a  track-repairer  somewhere 
in  the  orbit  of  the  earth. 

The  whistle  of  the  locomotive  penetrates  my  woods 
summer  and  winter,  sounding  like  the  scream  of  a 
hawk  sailing  over  some  farmer's  yard,  informing  me 
that  many  restless  city  merchants  are  arriving  within 
the  circle  of  the  town,  or  adventurous  country  traders 
from  the  other  side.  As  they  come  under  one  hori 
zon,  they  shout  their  warning  to  get  off  the  track  to 
the  other,  heard  sometimes  through  the  circles  of  two 
towns.  Here  come  your  groceries,  country ;  your  ra 
tions,  countrymen  !  Nor  is  there  any  man  so  independ 
ent  on  his  farm  that  he  can  say  them  nay.  And  here's 
your  pay  for  them  !  screams  the  countryman's  whis 
tle  ;  timber  like  long  battering  rams  going  twenty  miles 
an  hour  against  the  city's  walls,  and  chairs  enough 
to  seat  all  the  weary  and  heavy  laden  that  dwell  within 
them.  With  such  huge  and  lumbering  civility  the 
country  hands  a  chair  to  the  city.  All  the  Indian 
huckleberry  hills  are  stripped,  all  the  cranberry  meadows 
are  raked  into  the  city.  Up  comes  the  cotton,  down 
goes  the  woven  cloth ;  up  comes  the  silk,  down  goes 
the  woollen ;  up  come  the  books,  but  down  goes  the  wit 
that  writes  them. 

When  I  meet  the  engine  with  its  train  of  cars  moving 
off  with  planetary  motion,  —  or,  rather,  like  a  comet,  for 
the  beholder  knows  not  if  with  that  velocity  and  with 
that  direction  it  will  ever  revisit  this  system,  since  its 
orbit  does  not  look  like  a  returning  curve,  —  with  its 


SOUNDS.  127 

steam  cloud  like  a  banner  streaming  behind  in  golden 
and  silver  wreaths,  like  many  a  downy  cloud  which  I 
have  seen,  high  in  the  heavens,  unfolding  its  masses  to 
the  light,  —  as  if  this  travelling  demigod,  this  cloud- 
compeller,  would  ere  long  take  the  sunset  sky  for  the 
livery  of  his  train ;  when  I  hear  the  iron  horse  make 
the  hills  echo  with  his  snort  like  thunder,  shaking  the 
earlh  with  his  feet,  and  breathing  fire  and  smoke  from 
his  nostrils,  (what  kind  of  winged  horse  or  fiery  dragon 
they  will  put  into  the  new  Mythology  I  don't  know,)  it 
seems  as  if  the  earth  had  got  a  race  now  worthy  to  in 
habit  it.  If  ah1  were  as  it  seems,  and  men  made  the 
elements  their  servants  for  noble  ends !  If  the  cloud 
that  hangs  over  the  engine  were  the  perspiration  of 
heroic  deeds,  or  as  beneficent  as  that  which  floats  over 
the  farmer's  fields,  then  the  elements  and  Nature  her 
self  would  cheerfully  accompany  men  on  their  errands 
and  be  their  escort. 

I  watch  the  passage  of  the  morning  cars  with  the 
same  feeling  that  I  do  the  rising  of  the  sun,  which  is 
hardly  more  regular.  Their  train  of  clouds  stretching 
far  behind  and  rising  higher  and  higher,  going  to  heaven 
while  the  cars  are  going  to  Boston,  conceals  the  sun  for 
a  minute  and  casts  my  distant  field  into  the  shade,  a 
celestial  train  beside  which  the  petty  train  of  cars  which 
hugs  the  earth  is  but  the  barb  of  the  spear.  The  sta 
bler  of  the  iron  horse  was  up  early  this  winter  morning  by 
the  light  of  the  stars  amid  the  mountains,  to  fodder  and 
harness  his  steed.  Fire,  too,  was  awakened  thus  early 
to  put  the  vital  heat  in  him  and  get  him  off.  If  the  en 
terprise  were  as  innocent  as  it  is  early !  If  the  snow 
lies  deep,  they  strap  on  his  snow-shoes,  and  with  the 
giant  plough  plough  a  furrow  front  the  mountains  to  the 


128  WALDEN. 

seaboard,  in  wLich  the  cars,  like  a  following  drill- 
barrow,  sprinkle  all  the  restless  men  and  floating  mer 
chandise  in  the  country  for  seed.  All  day  the  fire-steed 
flies  over  the  country,  stopping  only  that  his  master  may 
rest,  and  I  am  awakened  by  his  tramp  and  defiant  snort 
at  midnight,  when  in  some  remote  glen  in  the  woods 
he  fronts  the  elements  incased  in  ice  and  snow ;  and  he 
will  reach  his  stall  only  with  the  morning  star,  to  start 
once  more  on  his  travels  without  rest  or  slumber.  Or 
perchance,  at  evening,  I  hear  him  in  his  stable  blow 
ing  off  the  superfluous  energy  of  the  day,  that  he 
may  calm  his  nerves  and  cool  his  liver  and  brain  for 
a  few  hours  of  iron  slumber.  If  the  enterprise  were  as 
heroic  and  commanding  as  it  is  protracted  and  un 
wearied  ! 

Far  through  unfrequented  woods  on  the  confines  of 
towns,  where  once  only  the  hunter  penetrated  by  day, 
in  the  darkest  night  dart  these  bright  saloons  without 
the  knowledge  of  their  inhabitants  ;  this  moment  stop 
ping  at  some  brilliant  station-house  in  town  or  city, 
where  a  social  crowd  is  gathered,  the  next  in  the  Dis 
mal  Swamp,  scaring  the  owl  and  fox.  The  startings 
and  arrivals  of  the  cars  are  now  the  epochs  in  the  vil 
lage  day.  They  go  and  come  with  such  regularity  and 
precision,  and  their  whistle  can  be  heard  so  far,  that  the 
farmers  set  their  clocks  by  them,  and  thus  one  well  con 
ducted  institution  regulates  a  whole  country.  Have 
not  men  improved  somewhat  in  punctuality  since  the 
railroad-  was  invented  ?  Do  they  not  talk  and  think 
faster  in  the  depot  than  they  did  in  the  stage-office  ? 
There  is  something  electrifying  in  the  atmosphere  of  the 
formel  place.  I  have  been  astonished  at  the  miracles 
it  has  wrought ;  that  some  of  my  neighbors,  who,  I 


SOUNDS.  129 

should  have  prophesied,  once  for  all,  would  never  gel  io 
Boston  by  so  prompt  a  conveyance,  are  on  hand  when 
the  bell  rings.  To  do  things  "  railroad  fashion "  is  now 
the  by-word  ;  and  it  is  worth  the  while  to  be  warned  so 
often  and  so  sincerely  by  any  power  to  get  off  its  track- 
There  is  no  stopping  to  read  the  riot  act,  no  firing  over 
the  heads  of  the  mob,  in  this  case.  We  have  constructed 
a  fate,  an  Atropos,  that  never  turns  aside.  (Let  that 
be  the  name  of  your  engine.)  Men  are  advertised  that 
at  a  certain  hour  and  minute  these  bolts  will  be  shot  to 
ward  particular  points  of  the  compass  ;  yet  it  interferes 
with  no  man's  business,  and  the  children  go  to  school  on 
the  other  track.  We  live  the  steadier  for  it.  We  are 
all  educated  thus  to  be  sons  of  Tell.  The  air  is  full  of 
invisible  bolts.  Every  path  but. your  own  is  the  path 
of  fate.  Keep  on  your  own  track,  then. 

What  recommends  commerce  to  me  is  its  enterprise 
and  bravery.  It  does  not  clasp  its  hands  and  pray  to 
Jupiter.  I  see  these  men  every  day  go  about  their  busi 
ness  with  more  or  less  courage  and  content,  doing  more 
even  than  they  suspect,  and  perchance  better  employed 
than  they  could  have  consciously  devised.  I  am  less 
affected  by  their  heroism  who  stood  up  for  half  an  hour 
in  the  front  line  at  Buena  Vista,  than  by  the  steady  and 
cheerful  valor  of  the  men  who  inhabit  the  snow-plough 
for  their  winter  quarters  ;  who  have  not  merely  the 
three-o'-clock  in  the  morning  courage,  which  Bonaparte 
thought  was  the  rarest,  but  whose  courage  does  not 
go  to  rest  so  early,  who  go  to  sleep  only  when  the  storm 
sleeps  or  the  sinews  of  their  iron  steed  are  frozen.  On 
this  morning  of  the  Great  Snow,  perchance,  which  is 
still  raging  and  chilling  men's  blood,  I  hear  the  muffiedl 
tone  of  their  engine  bell  from  out  the  fog  bank  of  theii 


130  WAI.  DEN. 

chilled  breath,  which  announces  that  the  cars  are  com' 
ing,  without  long  delay,  notwithstanding  the  veto  of  a 
New  England  north-east  snow  storm,  and  I  behold  the 
ploughmen  covered  with  snow  and  rime,  their  heads 
peering  above  the  mould-board  which  is  turning  down 
other  than  daisies  and  the  nests  of  field-mice,  like  bowl 
ders  of  the  Sierra  Nevada,  that  occupy  an  outside  place 
in  the  universe. 

Commerce  is  unexpectedly  confident  and  serene,  alert, 
adventurous,  and  unwearied.  It  is  very  natural  in  its 
methods  withal,  far  more  so  than  many  fantastic  enter 
prises  and  sentimental  experiments,  and  hence  its  sin 
gular  success.  I  am  refreshed  and  expanded  when  the 
freight  train  rattles  past  me,  and  I  smell  the  stores 
which  go  dispensing  their  odors  all  the  way  from  Long 
Wharf  to  Lake  Champlain,  reminding  me  of  foreign 
parts,  of  coral  reefs,  and  Indian  oceans,  and  tropical 
climes,  and  the  extent  of  the  globe.  I  feel  more  like  a 
citizen  of  the  world  at  the  sight  of  the  palm-leaf  which 
will  cover  so  many  flaxen  New  England  heads  the  next 
summer,  the  Manilla  hemp  and  cocoa-nut  husks,  the 
old  junk,  gunny  bags,  scrap  iron,  and  rusty  nails.  This 
car-load  of  torn  sails  is  more  legible  and  interesting  now 
than  if  they  should  be  wrought  into  paper  and  printed 
books.  Who  can  write  so  graphically  the  history  of  the 
storms  they  have  weathered  as  these  rents  have  done  ? 
They  are  proof-sheets  which  need  no  correction.  Here 
goes  lumber  from  the  Maine  woods,  which  did  not  go  out 
to  sea  in  the  last  freshet,  risen  four  dollars  on  the  thou 
sand  because  of  what  did  go  out  or  was  split  up ;  pine> 
spruce,  cedar,  —  first,  second,  third  and  fourth  qualities, 
so  lately  all  of  one  quality,  to  wave  over  the  bear,  and 
moose,  and  caribou.  Next  rolls  Thomaston  lime,  a, 


SOUNDS. 


prime  bt,  which  will  get  far  among  the  hills  before  it 
gets  slacked.  These  rags  in  bales,  of  all  hues  and 
qualities,  the  lowest  condition  to  which  cotton  and  linen 
descend,  the  final  result  of  dress,  —  of  patterns  which 
are  now  no  longer  cried  up,  unless  it  be  in  Milwaukie, 
as  those  splendid  articles,  English,  French,  or  American 
prints,  ginghams,  muslins,  &c.,  gathered  from  all  quar 
ters  both  of  fashion  and  poverty,  going  to  become 
paper  of  one  color  or  a  few  shades  only,  on  which  for 
sooth  will  be  written  tales  of  real  life,  high  and  low, 
and  founded  on  fact  !  This  closed  car  smells  of  salt 
fish,  the  strong  New  England  and  commercial  scent,  re 
minding  me  of  the  Grand  Banks  and  the  fisheries. 
Who  has  not  seen  a  salt  fish,  thoroughly  cured  for  this 
world,  so  that  nothing  can  spoil  it,  and  putting  the  per 
severance  of  *the  saints  to  the  blush  ?  with  which  you 
may  sweep  or  pave  the  streets,  and  split  your  kindlings, 
and  the  teamster  shelter  himself  and  his  lading  against 
sun  wind  and  rain  behind  it,  —  and  the  trader,  as  a 
Concord  trader  once  did,  hang  it  up  by  his  door  for  a 
sign  when  he  commences  business,  until  at  last  his  old 
est  customer  cannot  tell  surely  whether  it  be  animal, 
vegetable,  or  mineral,  and  yet  it  shall  be  as  pure  as  a 
snowflake,  and  if  it  be  put  into  a  pot  and  boiled,  will 
'come  out  an  excellent  dun  fish  for  a  Saturday's  dinner. 
Next  Spanish  hides,  with  the  tails  still  preserving  their 
twist  and  the  angle  of  elevation  they  had  when  the 
oxen  that  wore  them  were  careering  over  the  pampas 
of  the  Spanish  main,  —  a  type  of  all  obstinacy,  and 
evincing  how  almost  hopeless  and  incurable  are  all  con 
stitutional  vices.  I  confess,  that  practically  speaking, 
when  I  have  learned  a  man's  real  disposition,  1  have  no 
hopes  of  changing  it  for  the  better  or  worse  in  this  state  of 


132  WALDEN. 

existence.  As  the  Orientals  say,  "  A  cur's  tail  may  be 
warmed,  and  pressed,  and  bound  round  with  ligatures, 
and  after  a  twelve  years'  labor  bestowed  upon  it,  still  it 
will  retain  its  natural  form."  The  only  effectual  cure 
for  such  inveteracies  as  these  tails  exhibit  is  to  make 
glue  of  them,  wmVh  I  believe  is  what  is  usually  done 
with  them,  and  then  they  will  stay  put  and  stick.  Here 
is  a  hogshead  of  molasses  or  of  brandy  directed  to  John 
Smith,  Cuttingsville,  Vermont,  some  trader  among  the 
Green  Mountains,  who  imports  for  the  farmers  near  his 
clearing,  and  now  perchance  stands  over  his  bulk-head 
and  thinks  of  the  last  arrivals  on  the  coast,  how  they 
may  affect  the  price  for  him,  telling  his  customers  this 
moment,  as  he  has  told  them  twenty  times  before  this 
morning,  that  he  expects  some  by  the  next  train  of 
prime  quality.  It  is  advertised  in  the  Cuttingsville 
Times. 

While  these  things  go  up  other  things  come  down. 
Warned  by  the  whizzing  sound,  I  look  up  from  my 
book  and  see  some  tall  pine,  hewn  on  far  northern  hills, 
which  has  winged  its  way  over  the  Green  Mountains  and 
the  Connecticut,  shot  like  an  arrow  through  the  town 
ship  within  ten  minutes,  and  scarce  another  eye  be 
holds  it;  going 

"  to  be  the  mast 
Of  some  great  ammiral." 

And  hark  !  here  comes  the  cattle-train  bearing  the 
cattle  of  a  thousand  hills,  sheepcots,  stables,  and  cow- 
yards  in  the  air,  drovers  with  their  sticks,  and  shep 
herd  boys  in  the  midst  of  their  flocks,  all  but  the 
mountain  pastures,  whirled  along  like  leaves  blown 
from  the  mountains  by  the  September  gales.  The 


SOUNDS.  133 

air  is  filled  with  the  bleating  of  calves  and  sheep, 
and  the  hustling  of  oxen,  as  if  a  pastoral  valley  were 
going  by.  When  the  old  bell-weather  at  the  head  rat 
tles  his  bell,  the  mouniains  do  indeed  skip  like  rams  and 
the  little  hills  like  lambs.  A  car-load  of  drovers,  too, 
in  the  midst,  on  a  level  with  their  droves  now,  their  vo 
cation  gone,  but  still  clinging  to  their  useless  sticks  as 
their  badge  of  office.  But  their  dogs,  where  are  they? 
It  is  a  stampede  to  them ;  they  are  quite  thrown  out ; 
they  have  lost  the  scent.  Methinks  I  hear  them  bark 
ing  behind  the  Peterboro*  Hills,  or  panting  up  the  west 
ern  slope  of  the  Green  Mountains.  They  will  not  be 
in  at  the  death.  Their  vocation,  too,  is  gone.  Their 
fidelity  and  sagacity  are  below  par  now.  They  will 
slink  back  to  their  kennels  in  disgrace,  or  perchance 
run  wild  and  strike  a  league  with  the  wolf  and  the  fox. 
So  is  your  pastoral  life  whirled  past  and  away.  But 
the  bell  rings,  and  I  must  get  off  the  track  and  let 
the,  cars  go  by  ;  — 

What's  the  railroad  to  me  ? 

I  never  go  to  see 

Where  it  ends. 

It  fills  a  few  hollows, 

And  makes  banks  for  the  swallows, 

It  sets  the  sand  a-blowing, 

And  the  blackberries  a-growing, 

hut  I  cross  it  like  a  cart-path  in  the  woods.  I  will  not 
have  my  eyes  put  out  -and  my  ears  spoiled  by  its 
smoke  and  steam  and  hissing. 


Now  that  the  cars  are  gone  by  and  all  the  restless 
world  with  them,  and  the  fishes  in  .lie  pond  no  longer 


134  WALDEN. 

feel  their  rumbling,  I  am  more  alone  than  ever.  For 
the  rest  of  the  long  afternoon,  perhaps,  my  meditations 
are  interrupted  only  by  the  faint  rattle  of  a  carriage 
or  team  along  the  distant  highway. 

Sometimes,  on  Sundays,  I  heard  the  bells,  the  Lin 
coin,  Acton,  Bedford,  or  Concord  bell,  when  the  wind 
was  favorable,  a  faint,  sweet,  and,  as  it  were,  natural 
melody,  worth  importing  into  the  wilderness.  At  a  suf 
ficient  distance  over  the  woods  this  sound  acquires  a 
certain  vibratory  hum,  as  if  the  pine  needles  in  the  hori 
zon  were  the  strings  of  a  harp  which  it  swept.  All 
Bound  heard  at  the  greatest  possible  distance  produces 
one  and  the  same  effect,  a  vibration  of  the  universal  lyre, 
just  as  the  intervening  atmosphere  makes  a  distant 
ridge  of  earth  interesting  to  our  eyes  by  the  azure  tint 
it  imparts  to  it.  There  came  to  me  in  this  case  a  melody 
which  the  air  had  strained,  and  which  had  conversed 
with  every  leaf  and  needle  of  the  wood,  that  portion  of 
the  sound  which  the  elements  had  taken  up  and  modu 
lated  and  echoed  from  vale  to  vale.  The  echo  is,  to 
some  extent,  an  original  sound,  and  therein  is  the  ma 
gic  and  charm  of  it.  It  is  not  merely  a  repetition  of 
what  was  worth  repeating  in  the  bell,  but  partly  the 
voice  of  the  wood ;  the  same  trivial  words  and  notes 
sung  by  a  wood-nymph. 

At  evening,  the  distant  lowing  of  some  cow  in  the 
horizon  beyond  the  woods  sounded  sweet  and  melodious, 
and  at  first  I  would  mistake  it  for  the  voices  of  certain 
minstrels  by  whom  I  was  sometime?  serenaded,  who 
might  be  straying  over  hill  and  dale ;  but  soon  I  was  not 
unpleasantly  disappointed  when  it  was  prolonged  into 
the  cheap  and  natural  music  of  the  cow.  I  do  not  mean 
to  be  satirical,  but  to  express  my  appreciation  of  those 


SOUNDS.  135 

youths'  singing-,  when  I  state  that  I  perceived  clearly 
that  it  was  akin  to  the  music  of  the  cow,  and  they  were 
at  length  one  articulation  of  Nature. 

Regularly  at  half  past  seven,  in  one  part  of  the  sum 
mer,  after  the  evening  train  had  gone  by,  the  whippoor- 
wills  chanted  their  vespers  for  half  an  hour,  sitting  on  a 
stump  by  my  door,  or  upon  the  ridge  pole  of  the  house. 
They  would  begin  to  sing  almost  with  as  much  pre 
cision  as  a  clock,  within  five  minutes  of  a  particular 
time,  referred  to  the  setting  of  the  sun,  every  evening. 
I  had  a  rare  opportunity  to  become  acquainted  with  their 
habits.  Sometimes  I  heard  four  or  five  at  once  in  dif 
ferent  parts  of  the  wood,  by  accident  one  a  bar  behind 
another,  and  so  near  me  that  I  distinguished  not  only 
the  cluck  after  each  note,  but  often  that  singular  buzzing 
sound  like  a  fly  in  a  spider's  web,  only  proportionally 
louder.  Sometimes  one  would  circle  round  and  round 
me  in  the  woods  a  few  feet  distant  as  if  tethered  by  a 
string,  when  probably  I  was  near  its  eggs.  They  sang 
at  intervals  throughout  the  night,  and  were  again  as 
musical  as  ever  just  before  and  about  dawn. 

When  other  birds  are  still  the  screech  owls  take  up 
the  strain,  like  mourning  women  their  ancient  u-lu-lu. 
Their  dismal  scream  is  truly  Ben  Jonsonian.  Wise 
midnight  hags !  It  is  no  honest  and  blunt  tu-whit 
tu-who  of  the  poets,  but,  without  jesting,  a  most  solemn 
graveyard  ditty,  the  mutual  consolations  of  suicide  lov 
ers  remembering  the  pangs  and  the  delights  of  supernal 
love  in  the  infernal  groves.  Yet  I  love  to  hear  their 
wailing,  their  doleful  responses,  trilled  along  the  wood- 
side  ;  reminding  me  sometimes  of  music  and  singing 
birds ;  as  if  it  were  the  dark  and  tearful  side  of  music, 
the  regrets  and  sighs  that  would  fain  be  sung.  They 


136  WALDEN. 

are  the  spirits,  the  low  spirits  and  melancholy  fore 
bodings,  of  fallen  souls  that  once  in  human  shape  night- 
walked  the  earth  and  did  the  deeds  of  darkness,  now 
expiating  their  sins  with  their  wailing  hymns  or  thren 
odies  in  the  scenery  of  their  transgressions.  They  give 
me  a  new  sense  of  the  variety  and  capacity  of  that  na 
ture  which  is  our  common  dwelling.  Oh-o-o-o-o  that  I 
never  had  been  bor-r-r-r-n/  sighs  one  on  this  side  of 
the  pond,  and  circles  with  the  restlessness  of  despair  to 
some  new  perch  on  the  gray  oaks.  Then  —  that  I 
never  had  been  bor-r-r-r-n  I  echoes  another  on  the  far 
ther  side  with  tremulous  sincerity,  and  —  bor-r-r-r-n  ! 
comes  faintly  from  far  in  the  Lincoln  woods. 

I  was  also  serenaded  by  a  hooting  owl.  Near  at  hand 
you  could  fancy  it  the  most  melancholy  sound  in  Nature, 
as  if  she  meant  by  this  to  stereotype  and  make  perma 
nent  in  her  choir  the  dying  moans  of  a  human  being,  — 
some  poor  weak  relic  of  mortality  who  has  left  hope 
behind,  and  howls  like  an  animal,  yet  with  human  sobs, 
on  entering  the  dark  valley,  made  more  awful  by  a  cer 
tain  gurgling  melodiousness,  —  I  find  myself  beginning 
with  the  letters  gl  when  I  try  to  imitate  it,  —  expressive 
of  a  mind  which  has  reached  the  gelatinous  mildewy 
stage  in  the  mortification  of  all  healthy  and  courageous 
thought.  It  reminded  me  of  ghouls  and  idiots  and  in 
sane  bowlings.  But  now  one  answers  from  far  woods 
in  a  strain  made  really  melodious  by  distance,  —  Hoo 
hoo  hoo,  hoorer  hoo ;  and  indeed  for  the  most  part  it 
suggested  only  pleasing  associations,  whether  heard  by 
day  or  night,  summer  or  winter. 

I  rejoice  that  there  are  owls.  Let  them  do  the 
idiotic  and  maniacal  hooting  for  men.  It  is  a  sound 
admirably  suited  to  swamps  and  twilight  woods  wh/eh 


SOUNDS.  137 

no  day  illustrates,  suggesting  a  vast  and  undeveloped 
nature  which  men  have  not  recognized.  They  represent 
the  stark  twilight  and  unsatisfied  thoughts  which  all 
have.  All  day  the  sun  has  shone  on  the  surface  of 
some  savage  swamp,  where  the  single  spruce  stands  hung 
with  usnea  lichens,  and  small  hawks  circulate  above, 
and  the  chicadee  lisps  amid  the  evergreens,  and  tho 
partridge  and  rabbit  skulk  beneath ;  but  now  a  moi  e 
dismal  and  fitting  day  dawns,  and  a  different  race 
of  creatures  awakes  to  express  the  meaning  of  Nature 
there. 

Late  in  the  evening  I  heard  the  distant  rumbling  of 
wagons  over  bridges,  —  a  sound  heard  farther  than  almost 
any  other  at  night,  —  the  baying  of  dogs,  and  sometimes 
again  the  lowing  of  some  disconsolate  cow  in  a  distant 
barn-yard.  In  the  mean  while  all  the  shore  rang  with 
the  trump  of  bullfrogs,  the  sturdy  spirits  of  ancient  wine- 
bibbers  and  wassailers,  still  unrepentant,  trying  to  sing 
a  catch  in  their  Stygian  lake,  —  if  the  Walden  nymphs 
will  pardon  the  comparison,  for  though  there  are  almost 
no  weeds,  there  are  frogs  there,  —  who  would  fain  keep 
up  the  hilarious  rules  of  their  old  festal  tables,  though 
their  voices  have  waxed  hoarse  and  solemnly  grave, 
mocking  at  mirth,  and  the  wine  has  lost  its  flavor,  and 
become  only  liquor  to  distend  their  paunches,  and  sweet 
intoxication  never  comes  to  drown  the  memory  of  the 
past,  but  mere  saturation  and  waterloggedness  and  dis- 
tention.  The  most  aldermanic,  with  his  chin  upon  a 
heart-leaf,  which  serves  for  a  napkin  to  his  drooling 
chaps,  under  this  northern  shore  quaffs  a  deep  draught 
of  the  once  scorned  water,  and  passes  round  the  cup 
with  the  ejaculation  tr-r-r-oonk,  tr-r-r-oonk,  tr-r-r- 
oonkl  and  straightway  comes  over  the  water  from  some 


133  WALDEN. 

distant  cove  the  same  password  repeated,  where  the 
next  in  seniority  and  girth  has  gulped  down  to  his 
mark ;  and  when  this  observance  has  made  the  circuit 
of  the  shores,  then  ejaculates  the  master  of  ceremonies, 
with  satisfaction,  tr-r-r-oonk!  and  each  in  his  turn  re 
peats  the  same  down  to  the  least  distended,  leakiest,  and 
flabbiest  paunched,  that  there  be  no  mistake  ;  and  then 
the  bowl  goes  round  again  and  again,  until  the  sun  dis 
perses  the  morning  mist,  and  only  the  patriarch  is  not 
under  the  pond,  but  vainly  bellowing  troonk  from  time 
to  time,  and  pausing  for  a  reply. 

I  am  not  sure  that  I  ever  heard  the  sound  of  cock- 
crowing  from  my  clearing,  and  I  thought  that  it  might 
be  worth  the  while  to  keep  a  cockerel  for  his  music 
merely,  as  a  singing  bird.  The  note  of  this  once  wild 
Indian  pheasant  is  certainly  the  most  remarkable  of  any 
bird's,  and  if  they  could  be  naturalized  without  being 
domesticated,  it  would  soon  become  the  most  famous 
sound  in  our  woods,  surpassing  the  clangor  of  the  goose 
and  the  hooting  of  the  owl ;  and  then  imagine  the  cac 
kling  of  the  hens  to  fill  the  pauses  when  their  lords' 
clarions  rested !  No  wonder  that  man  added  this  bird 
to  his  tame  stock,  —  to  say  nothing  of  the  eggs  and  drum 
sticks.  To  walk  in  a  winter  morning  in  a  wood  where 
these  birds  abounded,  their  native  woods,  and  hear  the 
wild  cockerels  crow  on  the  trees,  clear  and  shrill  for 
miles  over  the  resounding  earth,  drowning  the  feebler 
notes  of  other  birds,  —  think  of  it !  It  would  put  na 
tions  on  the  alert.  Who  would  not  be  early  to  rise, 
and  rise  earlier  and  earlier  every  successive  day  of  his 
life,  till  he  became  unspeakably  healthy,  wealthy,  and 
wise  ?  This  foreign  bird's  note  is  celebrated  by  the 
poets  of  all  countries  along  with  the  notes  of  their  na- 


SOUNDS.  139 

tire  songsters.  All  climates  agree  with  brave  Chan 
ticleer.  He  is  more  indigenous  even  than  the  natives. 
His  health  is  ever  good,  his  lungs  are  sound,  his  spirits 
never  flag.  Even  the  sailor  on  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific 
is  awakened  by  his  voice ;  but  its  shrill  sound  never 
roused  me  from  my  slumbers.  I  kept  neither  dog,  cat, 
cow,  pig,  nor  hens,  so  that  you  would  have  said  there 
was  a  deficiency  of  domestic  sounds ;  neither  the  churn, 
nor  the  spinning  wheel,  nor  even  the  singing  of  the  ket 
tle,  nor  the  hissing  of  the  urn,  nor  children  crying,  to 
comfort  one-  An  old-fashioned  man  would  have  lost 
his  senses  or  died  of  ennui  before  this.  Not  even  rats 
in  the  wall,  for  they  were  starved  out,  or  rather  were 
never  baited  in,  —  only  squirrels  on  the  roof  and  under 
the  floor,  a  whippoorwill  on  the  ridge  pole^  a  blue-jay 
screaming  beneath  the  window,  a  hare  or  woodchuck 
under  the  house,  a  screech-owl  or  a  cat-owl  behind  it,  a 
flock  of  wild  geese  or  a  laughing  loon  on  the  pond,  and 
a  fox  to  bark  in  the  night.  Not  even  a  lark  or  an 
oriole,  those  mild  plantation  birds,  ever  visited  my  clear 
ing.  No  cockerels  to  crow  nor  hens  to  cackle  in  the 
yard.  No  yard !  but  un fenced  Nature  reaching  up  to 
your  very  sills.  A  young  forest  growing  up  under 
your  windows,  and  wild  sumachs  and  blackberry  vines 
breaking  through  into  your  cellar ;  sturdy  pitch-pines 
rubbing  and  creaking  against  the  shingles  for  want  of 
room,  their  roots  reaching  quite  under  the  house.  In 
stead  of  a  scuttle  or  a  blind  blown  off  in  the  gale,  —  a 
pine  tree  snapped  off  or  torn  up  by  the  roots  behind 
your  houss  for  fuel.  Instead  of  no  path  to  the  front- 
yard  gate  in  the  Great  Snow,  —  no  gate  —  no  front- 
yard,  —  and  no  path  to  the  civilized  world  ! 


SOLITUDE. 


THIS  is  a  delicious  evening,  when  the  whole  budy  is 
one  sense,  and  imbibes  delight  through  every  pore.  I 
go  and  come  with  a  strange  liberty  in  Nature,  a  part  of 
herself.  As  I  walk  along  the  stony  shore  of  the  pond . 
in  my  shirt  sleeves,  though  it  is  cool  as  well  as  cloudy 
and  windy,  and  I  see  nothing  special  to  attract  me,  alJ 
the  elements  are  unusually  congenial  to  me.  The  bull 
frogs  trump  to  usher  in  the  night,  and  the  note  of 
the  whippoorwill  is  borne  on  the  rippling  wind  from 
over  the  water.  Sympathy  with  the  fluttering  aldei 
and  poplar  leaves  almost  takes  away  my  breath ;  yet, 
like  the  lake,  my  serenity  is  rippled  but  not  ruffled. 
These  small  waves  raised  by  the  evening  wind  are  as 
remote  from  storm  as  the  smooth  reflecting  surface. 
Though  it  is  now  dark,  the  wind  still  blows  and  roars  in 
the  wood,  the  waves  still  dash,  and  some  creatures  lull 
the  rest  with  their  notes.  The  repose  is  never  com 
plete.  The  wildest  animals  do  not  repose,  but  seek 
their  prey  now ;  the  fox,  and  skunk,  and  rabtit,  now 
roam  the  fields  and  woods  without  fear.  They  are  Na 
ture's  watchmen,  —  link*  which  connect  the  days  of 
animated  life,  (14°) 


SOLITUDE.  14l 

When  I  return  to  my  house  I  find  that  visitors  have 
been  there  and  left  their  cards,  either  a  bunch  of  flow 
ers,  or  a  wreath  of  evergreen,  or  a  name  in  pencil  on  a 
yellow  walnut  leaf  or  a  chip.  They  who  come  rarely 
to  the  woods  take  some  little  piece  of  the  forest  into 
their  hands  to  play  with  by  the  way,  which  they  leave, 
either  intentionally  or  accidentally.  One  has  peeled  a 
willow  wand,  woven  it  into  a  ring,  and  dropped  it  on  my 
table.  I  could  always  tell  if  visitors  had  called  in 
my  absence,  either  by  the  bended  twigs  or  grass,  or 
the  print  of  their  shoes,  and  generally  of  what  sex  or 
age  or  quality  they  were  by  some  slight  trace  left,  as 
a  flower  dropped,  or  a  bunch  of  grass  plucked  and 
thrown  away,  even  as  far  off  as  the  railroad,  half  a  mile 
distant,  or  by  the  lingering  odor  of  a  cigar  or  pipe. 
Nay,  I  was  frequently  notified  of  the  passage  of  a  trav 
eller  along  the  highway  sixty  rods  off  by  the  scent  of 
his  pipe. 

There  is  commonly  sufficient  space  about  us.  Our 
horizon  is  never  quite  at  our  elbows.  The  thick  wood 
is  notxjust  at  our  door,  nor  the  pond,  but  somewhat  is 
always  clearing,  familiar  and  worn  by  us,  appropriated 
and  fenced  in  some  way,  and  reclaimed  from  Nature. 
For  what  reason  have  I  this  vast  range  and  circuit, 
some  square  miles  of  unfrequented  forest,  for  my  pri 
vacy,  abandoned  to  me  by  men  ?  My  nearest  neighbor 
is  a  mile  distant,  and  no  house  is  visible  from  any  place 
but  the  hill-tops  within  half  a  mile  of  my  own.  I  have 
my  horizon  bounded  by  woods  all  to  myself;  a  distant 
view  of  the  railroad  where  it  touches  the  pond  on  the  one 
hand,  and  of  the  fence  which  skirts  the  woodland  road 
sm  the  other.  But  for  the  most  part  it  is  as  solitary 
where  I  live  as  on  the  prairies.  It  is  as  much  Asia 


42  WALDEN. 

or  Africa  as  New  England.  I  have,  as  it  were,  my  cr,vn 
sun  and  moon  and  stars,  and  a  little  world  all  to  myself. 
At  night  there  was  never  a  traveller  passed  my  house, 
or  knocked  at  my  door,  more  than  if  I  were  the  first  or 
last  man ;  unless  it  were  in  the  spring,  when  at  long  in 
tervals  some  came  from  the  village  to  fish  for  pouts,  — 
they  plainly  fished  much  more  in  the  Walden  Pond  of 
their  own  natures,  and  baited  their  hooks  with  dark 
ness,  —  but  they  soon  retreated,  usually  with  light  bas 
kets,  and  left  "  the  world  to  darkness  and  to  me,"  and 
the  black  kernel  of  the  night  was  never  profaned  by 
any  human  neighborhood.  I  believe  that  men  are  gen 
erally  still  a  little  afraid  of  the  dark,  though  the  witches 
are  all  hung,  and  Christianity  and  candles  have  been 
introduced. 

Yet  I  experienced  sometimes  that  the  most  sweet  and 
tender,  the  most  innocent  and  encouraging  society  may 
be  found  in  any  natural  object,  even  for  the  poor  mis 
anthrope  and  most  melancholy  man.  There  can  be  no 
very  black  melancholy  to  him  who  lives  in  the  midst  of 
Nature  and  has  his  senses  still.  There  was  never  yet 
such  a  storm  but  it  was  ^Eolian  music  to  a  healthy  and 
innocent  ear.  Nothing  can  rightly  compel  a  simple  and 
brave  man  to  a  vulgar  sadness.  While  I  enjoy  the 
friendship  of  the  seasons  I  trust  that  nothing  can  make 
life  a  burden  to  me.  The  gentle  rain  which  waters  my 
beans  and  keeps  me  in  the  house  to-day  is  not  dreai 
and  melancholy,  but  good  for  me  too.  Though  it  pre 
vents  my  hoeing  them,  it  is  of  far  more  worth  than  my 
hoeing.  If  it  should  continue  so  long  as  to  cause  the 
seeds  to  rot  in  the  ground  and  destroy  the  potatoes  in 
the  low  lands,  it  would  still  be  good  for  the  grass  on  the 
uplands,  and,  being  good  for  the  grass,  it  would  be  good 


SOLITUDE.  143 

for  me.  Sometimes,  when  I  compare  myself  with  other 
men,  it  seems  as  if  I  were  more  favored  by  the  gods  than 
they,  beyond  any  deserts  that  I  am  conscious  01 ;  as 
if  I  had  a  warrant  and  surety  at  their  hands  which  my 
follows  have  not,  and  were  especially  guided  and 
guarded.  I  do  not  flatter  myself,  but  if  it  be  possible 
they  flatter  me.  I  have  nev.er  felt  lonesome,  or  in  the 
least  oppressed  by  a  sense  of  solitude,  but  once,  and 
that  was  a  few  weeks  after  I  came  to  the  woods,  when, 
for  an  hour,  I  doubted  if  the  near  neighborhood  of  man 
was  not  essential  to  a  serene  and  healthy  life.  To  be 
alone  was  something  unpleasant.  But  I  was  at  the 
same  time  conscious  of  a  slight  insanity  in  my  mood,  and 
seemed  to  foresee  my  recovery.  In  the  midst  of  a  gen 
tle  rain  while  these  thoughts  prevailed,  I  was  suddenly 
sensible  of  such  sweet  and  beneficent  society  in  Nature, 
in  the  very  pattering  of  the  drops,  and  in  every  sound  and 
sight  around  my  house,  an  infinite  and  unaccountable 
friendliness  all  at  once  like  an  atmosphere  sustaining 
me,  as  made  the  fancied  advantages  of  human  neighbor 
hood  insignificant,  and  I  have  never  thought  of  them 
since.  Every  little  pine  needle  expanded  and  swelled 
with  sympathy  and  befriended  me.  I  was  so  distinctly 
made  aware  of  the  presence  of  something  kindred  to 
me,  even  in  scenes  which  we  are  accustomed  to  call 
wild  and  dreary,  and  also  that  the  nearest  of  blood  to 
me  and  humanest  was  not  a  person  nor  a  villager,  that 
I  thought  no  place  could  ever  be  strange  to  me  again.-— 

"  Mourning  untimely  consumes  the  sad  ; 
Few  are  their  days  in  the  land  of  the  living, 
Beautiful  daughter  of  Toscar." 

Some  of  my  pleasantest  hours  were  during  the  long 


144  WALDEN. 

rain  storms  in  the  spring  or  fall,  which  confined  roe  to 
the  house  for  the  afternoon  as  well  as  the  forenoon, 
soothed  by  their  ceaseless  roar  and  pelting ;  when  an 
early  twilight  ushered  in  a  long  evening  in  which  many 
thoughts  had  time  to  take  root  and  unfold  themselves. 
In  those  driving  north-east  rains  which  tried  the  village 
houses  so,  when  the  maids  stood  ready  with  mop  and 
pail  in  front  entries  to  keep  the  deluge  out,  I  sat  behind 
my  door  in  my  little  house,  which  was  all  entry,  and 
thoroughly  enjoyed  its  protection.  In  one  heavy  thun 
der  shower  the  lightning  struck  a  large  pitch-pine 
across  the  pond,  making  a  very  conspicuous  and  perfect 
ly  regular  spiral  groove  from  top  to  bottom,  an  inch  or 
more  deep,  and  four  or  five  inches  wide,  as  you  would 
groove  a  walking-stick.  I  passed  it  again  the  other 
day,  and  was  struck  with  awe  on  looking  up  and  behold 
ing  that  mark,  now  more  distinct  than  ever,  where  a 
terrific  and  resistless  bolt  came  down  out  of  the  harm 
less  sky  eight  years  ago.  Men  frequently  say  to  me, 
"  I  should  think  you  would  feel  lonesome  down  there, 
and  want  to  be  nearer  to  folks,  rainy  and  snowy  days  and 
nights  especially."  I  am  tempted  to  reply  to  such,  — • 
This  whole  earth  which  we  inhabit  is  but  a  point  in 
space.  How  far  apart,  think  you,  dwell  the  two  most 
distant  inhabitants  of  yonder  star,  the  breadth  of  whose 
disk  cannot  be  appreciated  by  our  instruments  ?  Why 
should  I  feel  lonely?  is  not  our  planet  in  the  Milky 
"Way  ?  This  which  you  put  seems  to  me  not  to  be  the 
most  important  question.  What  sort  of  space  is  that 
which  separates  a  man  from  his  fellows  and  makes 
him  solitary?  I  have  found  that  no  exertion  of  the 
legs  can  bring  two  minds  much  nearer  to  one  an 
other.  What  do  we  want  most  to  dwell  near  to  ? 


SOLITUDE.  145 

Not  to  many  men  surely,  the  depot,  the  p^st-office, 
the  bar-room,  the  meeting-house,  the  school-house,  the 
grocery,  Beacon  Hill,  or  the  Five  Points,  where  men 
most  congregate,  but  to  the  perennial  source  of  our  life, 
whence  in  all  our  experience  we  have  found  that  to 
issue,  as  the  willow  stands  near  the  water  and  sends  out 
its  roots  in  that  direction.  This  will  vary  with  different 
natures,  but  this  is  the  place  where  a  wise  man  will  dig 
his  cellar.  ...  I  one  evening  overtook  one  of  my  towns 
men,  who  has  accumulated  what  is  called  "  a  handsome 
property,"  —  though  I  never  got  a  fair  view  of  it,  — 
on  the  Walden  road,  driving  a  pair  of  cattle  to  market, 
who  inquired  of  me  how  I  could  bring  my  mind  to  give 
up  so  many  of  the  comforts  of  life.  I  answered  that  I 
was  very  sure  I  liked  it  passably  well ;  I  was  not  joking. 
And  so  I  went  home  to  my  bed,  and  left  him  to  pick 
his  way  through  the  darkness  and  the  mud  to  Brighton, 
—  or  Bright-town,  —  which  place  he  would  reach  some 
time  in  the  morning. 

Any  prospect  of  awakening  or  coming  to  life  to  a 
dead  man  makes  indifferent  all  times  and  places.  The 
place  where  that  may  occur  is  always  the  same,  and  inde 
scribably  pleasant  to  all  our  senses.  For  the  most  part 
we  allow  only  outlying  and  transient  circumstances  to 
make  our  occasions.  They  are,  in  fact,  the  cause  of  our 
distraction.  Nearest  to  all  things  is  that  power  which 
fashions  their  being.  Next  to  us  the  grandest  laws  are 
continually  being  executed.  Next  to  us  is  not  the  work 
man  whom  we  have  hired,  with  whom  we  love  so  well 
to  talk,  but  the  workman  whose  work  we  are. 

"  How  vast  and  profound  is  the  influence  of  the  sub 
tile  powers  of  Heaven  and  of  Earth  ! " 

"  We  seek  to  perceive  them,  and  we  do  not  see  them  ; 
10 


1 4:6  "WALDEN. 

we  seek  to  hear  them,  and  we  do  not  hear  them;  iden 
tified  \\  ith  the  substance  of  things,  they  cannot  be  sepa 
rated  from  them." 

"  They  cause  that  in  all  the  universe  men  purify  and 
sanctify  their  hearts,  and  clothe  themselves  in  theii 
holiday  garments  to  offer  sacrifices  and  oblations  to  their 
ancestors.  It  is  an  ocean  of  subtile  intelligences.  They 
are  every  where,  above  us,  on  our  left,  on  our  right ; 
they  environ  us  on  all  sides." 

"We  are  the  subjects  of  an  experiment  which  is  not 
a  little  interesting  to  me.  Can  we  not  do  without  the 
society  of  our  gossips  a  little  while  under  these  cir 
cumstances,  —  have  our  own  thoughts  to  cheer  us  ? 
Confucius  says  truly,  "  Virtue  does  not  rema'in  as  an 
abandoned  orphan  ;  it  must  of  necessity  have  neigh 
bors." 

With  thinking  we  may  be  beside  ourselves  in  a  sano 
sense.  By  a  conscious  effort  of  the  mind  we  can  stand 
aloof  from  actions  and  their  consequences;  and  all  things, 
good  and  bad,  go  by  us  like  a  torrent.  We  are  not 
wholly  involved  in  Nature.  I  may  be  either  the  drift 
wood  in  the  stream,  or  Indra  in  the  sky  looking  down 
on  it.  I  may  be  affected  by  a  theatrical  exhibition  ;  on 
the  other  hand,  I  may  not  be  affected  by  an  actual  event 
which  appears  to  concern  me  much  more.  I  only  know 
myself  as  a  human  entity ;  the  scene,  so  to  speak,  cf 
thoughts  and  affections ;  and  am  sensible  of  a  certain 
doubleness  by  which  I  can  stand  as  remote  from  myself 
as  from  another.  However  intense  my  experience,  I 
am  conscious  of  the  presence  and  criticism  of  a  part  of 
me,  which,  as  it  were,  is  not  a  part  of  me,  but  specta 
tor,  sharing  no  experience,  but  taking  note  of  it ;  and 
*iiat  is  no  more  I  than  it  is  you.  When  the  play,  it 


SOLITUDE.  147 

may  be  the  tragedy,  of  life  is  over,  the  spectator  goes 
his  way.  It  was  a  kind  of  fiction,  a  work  of  the  imagi 
nation  only,  so  far  as  he  was  concerned.  This  double- 
ness  may  easily  make  us  poor  neighbors  and  friends 
sometimes. 

I  find  it  wholesome  to  be  alone  the  greater  part  of 
the  time.  To  be  in  company,  even  with  the  best,  is 
soon  wearisome  and  dissipating.  I  love  to  be  alone.  I 
never  found  the  companion  that  was  so  companionable 
as  solitude.  We  are  for  the  most  part  more  lonely 
when  we  go  abroad  among  men  than  when  we  stay  in 
our  chambers.  A  man  thinking  or  working  is  always 
alone,  let  him  be  where  he  will.  Solitude  is  not  meas 
ured  by  the  miles  of  space  that  intervene  between  a 
man  and  his  fellows.  The  really  diligent  student  in 
one  of  the  crowded  hives  of  Cambridge  College  is  as 
solitary  as  a  dervis  in  the  desert.  The  farmer  can 
work  alone  in  the  field  or  the  woods  all  day,  hoeing  or 
chopping,  and  not  feel  lonesome,  because  he  is  em 
ployed  ;  but  when  he  comes  home  at  night  he  cannot  sit 
down  in  a  room  alone,  at  the  mercy  of  his  thoughts, 
but  must  be  where  he  can  "  see  the  folks,"  and  recreate, 
and  as  he  thinks  remunerate,  himself  for  his  day's  soli 
tude  ;  and  hence  he  wonders  how  the  student  can  sit 
alone  in  the  house  all  night  and  most  of  the  day  with 
out  ennui  and  "  the  blues ; "  but  he  does  not  realize  that 
the  student,  though  in  the  house,  is  still  at  work  in  his 
field,  and  chopping  in  his  woods,  as  the  farmer  in  his, 
and  in  turn  seeks  the  same  recreation  and  society  that 
the  latter  does,  though  it  may  be  a  more  condensed  form 
of  it. 

Society  is  commonly  too  cheap.  "We  meet  at  very 
intervals,  not  having  had  time  to  acquire  any  new 


1 48  WALDEN. 

value  for  each  other.  We  meet  at  meals  three  times  a 
day,  and  give  each  other  a  new  taste  of  that  old  musty 
cheese  that  wft  are.  We  have  had  to  agree  on  a  certain 
set  of  rules,  called  etiquette  and  politeness,  to  make  this 
frequent  meeting  tolerable  and  that  we  need  not  conn 
to  open  war.  We  meet  at  the  post-office,  and  at  the 
sociable,  and  about  the  fireside  every  night ;  we  live 
thick  and  are  in  each  other's  way,  and  stumble  over  one 
another,  and  I  think  that  we  thus  lose  some  respect  for 
one  another.  Certainly  less  frequency  would  suffice 
for  all  important  and  hearty  communications.  Con 
sider  the  girls  in  a  factory,  —  never  alone,  hardly  in  their 
dreams.  It  would  be  better  if  there  were  but  one  in 
habitant  to  a  square  mile,  as  where  I  live.  The  value 
of  a  man  is  not  in  his  skin,  that  we  should  touch  him. 

I  have  heard  of  a  man  lost  in  the  woods  and  dying 
of  famine  and  exhaustion  at  the  foot  of  a  tree,  whose 
loneliness  was  relieved  by  the  grotesque  visions  with 
which,  owing  to  bodily  weakness,  his  diseased  imagina 
tion  surrounded  him,  and  which  he  believed  'to  be  real. 
So  also,  owing  to  bodily  and  mental  health  and  strength, 
we  may  be  continually  cheered  by  a  like  but  more  nor 
mal  and  natural  society,  and  come  to  know  that  we  are 
never  abne. 

I  have  a  great  deal  of  company  in  my  house;  es 
pecially  in  the  morning,  when  nobody  calls.  Let  me 
suggest  a  few  comparisons,  that  some  one  may  convey 
an  idea  of  my  situation.  I  am  no  more  lonely  than  the 
loon  in  the  pond  that  laughs  so  loud,  or  than  Walden 
Pond  itself.  What  company  has  that  lonely  lake,  I 
pray  ?  And  yet  it  has  not  the  blue  devils,  but  the  blue 
angels  in  it,  in  the  azure  tint  of  its  waters.  The  sun  is 
alone,  exc:pt  in  thick  weather,  when  there  sometimes 


SOLITUDE.  1-19 

appear  to  b^  two,  but  one  is  a  mock  sun.  God  is 
alone,  —  but  the  devil,  he  is  far  from  being  alone ;  he 
sees  a  great  deal  of  company ;  he  is  legion.  I  am  no 
more  lonely  than  a  single  mullein  or  dandelion  in  a  pas 
ture,  or  a  bean  leaf,  or  sorrel,  or  a  horse-fly,  or  a  hum 
ble-bee.  I  am  no  more  lonely  than  the  Mill  Brook,  or  a 
weathercock,  or  the  north  star,  or  the  south  wind,  or  an 
April  shower,  or  a  January  thaw,  or  the  first  spider  in 
a  new  house. 

I  have  occasional  visits  in  the  long  winter  evenings, 
when  the  snow  falls  fast  and  the  wind  howls  in  the 
wood,  from  an  old  settler  and  original  proprietor,  who 
is  reported  to  have  dug  Walden  Pond,  and  stoned  it, 
and  fringed  it  with  pine  woods;  who  tells  me  stories 
of  old  time  and  of  new  eternity ;  and  between  us  we 
manage  to  pass  a  cheerful  evening  with  social  mirth 
and  pleasant  views  of  things,  even  without  apples  or 
cider,- — a  most  wise  and  humorous  friend,  whom  I  love 
much,  who  keeps  himself  more  secret  than  ever  did 
Goffe  or  Whalley ;  and  though  he  is  thought  to  be  dead, 
none  can  show  where  he  is  buried.  An  elderly  dame, 
too,  dwells  in  my  neighborhood,  invisible  to  most  per 
sons,  in  whose  odorous  herb  garden  I  love  to  stroll  some 
times,  gathering  simples  and  listening  to  her  fables ; 
for  she  has  a  genius  of  unequalled  fertility,  and  her 
memory  runs  back  farther  than  mythology,  and  she 
can  tell  me  the  original  of  every  fable,  and  on  what 
fact  every  one  is  founded,  for  the  incidents  occurred 
when  she  wa's  young.  A  ruddy  and  lusty  old  dame, 
who  delights  in  all  weathers  and  seasons,  and  is  likely  to 
outlive  all  her  children  yet. 

The  indescribable  innocence  and  beneficence  of  Na* 


150  WALDEN. 

ture,  —  of  sun  and  wind  and  rain,  of  summer  and  win 
ter,  —  such  health,  such  cheer,  they  afford  forever ! 
and  such  sympathy  have  they  ever  with  our  race,  that 
all  Nature  would  be  affected,  and  the  sun's  brightness 
fade,  and  the  winds  would  sigh  humanely,  and  the  clouds 
rain  tears,  and  the  woods  shed  their  leaves  and  put  on 
mourning  in  midsummer,  if  any  man  should  ever  for  a 
just  cause  grieve.  Shall  I  not  have  intelligence  with 
the  earth?  Am  I  not  partly  leaves  and  vegetable 
mould  myself? 

What  is  the  pill  which  will  keep  us  well,  serene,  con 
tented  ?  Not  my  or  thy  great-grandfather's,  but  our 
great-grandmother  Nature's  universal,  vegetable,  bo 
tanic  medicines,  by  which  she  has  kept  herself  young 
always,  outlived  so  many  old  Parrs  in  her  day,  and  fed 
her  health  with  their  decaying  fatness.  For  my  pana< 
cea,  instead  of  one  of  those  quack  vials  of  a  mixture 
dipped  from  Acheron  and  the  Dead  Sea,  which  come 
out  of  those  long  shallow  black-schooner  looking  wagons 
which  we  sometimes  see  made  to  carry  bottles,  let  me 
have  a  draught  of  undiluted  morning  air.  Morning 
air !  If  men  will  not  drink  of  this  at  the  fountain-head 
of  the  day,  why,  then,  we  must  even  bottle  up  some  and 
sell  it  in  the  shops,  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  havf 
lost  their  subscription  ticket  to  morning  time  in  this 
world.  But  remember,  it  will  not  keep  quite  till  noon 
day  even  in  the  coolest  cellar,  but  drive  out  the  stop 
ples  long  ere  that  and  follow  westward  the  steps  of  Au 
rora.  I  am  no  worshipper  of  Hygeia,  who  was  the 
daughter  of  that  old  herb-doctor  JEsculapius,  and  who 
is  represented  on  monuments  holding  a  serpent  in  one 
hand,  and  in  the  other  a  cup  out  of  which  the  serpent 


SOLITUDE.  151 

sometimes  drinks ;  but  rather  of  Hebe,  cupbearer  to 
Jupiter,  who  was  the  daughter  of  Juno  and  wild  let 
tuce,  and  who  had  the  power  of  restoring  gods  and 
men  to  the  vigor  of  youth.  She  was  probably  the  only 
thoroughly  sound-conditioned,  healthy,  and  robust  young 
lady  that  ever  walked  the  globe,  aad  wherever  she  canie 
it  was  spring. 


VISITORS. 


I  THINK  that  I  love  society  as  much  as  most,  and 
am  ready  enough  to  fasten  myself  like  a  bloodsucker 
for  the  time  to  any  full-blooded  man  that  comes  in  my 
way.  I  am  naturally  no  hermit,  but  might  possibly  sit 
out  the  sturdiest  frequenter  of  the  bar-room,  if  my  busi 
ness  called  me  thither. 

I  had  three  chairs  in  my  house ;  one  for  solitude,  two 
for  friendship,  three  for  society.  When  visitors  came 
in  larger  and  unexpected  numbers  there  was  but  the 
third  chair  for  them  all,  but  they  generally  economized 
the  room  by  standing  up.  It  is  surprising  how  many 
great  men  and  women  a  small  house  will  contain.  I 
have  had  twenty-five  or  thirty  souls,  with  their  bodies, 
at  once  under  my  roof,  and  yet  we  often  parted  without 
being  aware  that  we  had  come  very  near  to  one  another. 
Many  of  our  houses,  both  public  and  private,  with  their 
almost  innumerable  apartments,  their  huge  halls  and 
their  cellars  for  the  storage  of  wines  and  other  munitions 
of  peace,  appear  to  me  extravagantly  large  for  their 
inhabitants.  They  are  so  vast  and  magnificent  that  the 
latter  seem  to  be  only  vermin  which  infest  them.  I  am 

(152) 


VISITORS.  153 

sui  prised  when  the  herald  blows  his  summons  before 
some  Tremont  or  Astor  or  Middlesex  House,  to  see 
come  creeping  out  over  the  piazza  for  all  inhabitants  a 
ridiculous  mouse,  which  soon  again  slinks  into  some  hole 
in  the  pavement. 

One  inconvenience  I  sometimes  experienced  in  so 
small  a  house,  the  difficulty  of  getting  to  a  sufficient  dis 
tance  from  my  guest  when  we  began  to  utter  the  big 
thoughts  in  big  words.  You  want  room  for  your 
thoughts  to  get  into  sailing  trim  and  run  a  course  or 
two  before  they  make  their  port.  The  bullet  of  your 
thought  must  have  overcome  its  lateral  and  ricochet 
motion  and  fallen  into  its  last  and  steady  course  before 
it  reaches  the  ear  of  the  hearer,  else  it  may  plough  out 
pgain  through  the  side  of  his  head.  Also,  our  sen 
tences  wanted  room  to  unfold  and  form  their  columns  in 
the  interval.  Individuals,  like  nations,  must  have  suit 
able  broad  and  natural  boundaries,  even  a  considerable 
neutral  ground,  between  them.  I  have  found  it  a  sin 
gular  luxury  to  talk  across  the  pond  to  a  companion  on 
the  opposite  side.  In  my  house  we  were  so  near  that 
we  could  not  begin  tp  hear,  —  we  could  not  speak  low 
enough  to  be  heard;  as  when  you  throw  two  stones 
into  calm  water  so  near  that  they  break  each  other's 
undulations.  If  we  are  merely  loquacious  and  loud 
talkers,  then  we  can  afford  to  stand  very  near  together, 
cheek  by  jowl,  and  feel  each  other's  breath ;  but  if 
we  speak  reservedly  and  thoughtfully,  we  want  to  be 
farther  apart,  that  all  animal  heat  and  moisture  may 
have  a  chance  to  evaporate.  If  we  would  enjoy  the 
most  intimate  society  with  that  in  each  of  us  which  is 
without,  or  above,  being  spoken  to,  we  must  not  only  be 
silent,  but  commonly  so  far  apart  bodily  that  we  cannot 


154  WALDEN. 

possibly  hear  each  other's  voice  in  any  case.  Referred 
to  this  standard,  speech  is  for  the  convenience  of  those 
who  are  hard  of  hearing ;  but  there  are  many  fine 
things  which  we  cannot  say  if  we  have  to  shout.  As 
the  conversation  began  to  assume  a  loftier  and  grander 
tone,  we  gradually  shoved  our  chairs  farther  apart  till 
they  touched  the  wall  in  opposite  corners,  arid  then 
commonly  there  was  not  room  enough. 

My  "  best"  room,  however,  my  withdrawing  room,  al 
ways  ready  for  company,  on  whose  carpet  the  sun  rare 
ly  fell,  was  the  pine  wood  behind  my  house.  Thither  in 
summer  days,  when  distinguished  guests  came,  I  took 
them,  and  a  priceless  domestic  swept  the  floor  and 
dusted  the  furniture  and  kept  the  things  in  order. 

If  one  guest  came  he  sometimes  partook  of  my  frugal 
meal,  and  it  was  no  interruption  to  conversation  to  be 
stirring  a  hasty-pudding,  or  watching  the  rising  and  ma 
turing  of  a  loaf  of  bread  in  the  ashes,  in  the  mean  while. 
But  if  twenty  came  and  sat  in  my  house  there  was 
nothing  said  about  dinner,  though  there  might  be  bread 
enough  for  two,  more  than  if  eating  were  a  forsaken 
habit ;  but  we  naturally  practised  abstinence ;  and  this 
was  never  felt  to  be  an  offence  against  hospitality,  but 
the  most  proper  and  considerate  course.  The  waste 
and  decay  of  physical  life,  which  so  often  needs  repair, 
seemed  miraculously  retarded  in  such  a  case,  and  the 
vital  vigor  stood  its  ground.  I  could  entertain  thus  a 
thousand  as  well  as  twenty ;  and  if  -any  ever  went  away 
disappointed  or  hungry  from  my  house  when  they  found 
me  at  home,  they  may  depend  upon  it  that  I  sympa 
thized  with  them  at  least.  So  easy  is  it,  though  many 
housekeepers  doubt  it,  to  establish  new  and  better  cus 
toms  in  the  place  of  the  old.  You  need  not  rest  youi 


VISITORS.  155 

reputation  on  the  dinners  you  give.  For  my  own  part, 
I  was  never  so  effectually  deterred  from  frequenting  a 
man's  house,  by  any  kind  of  Cerberus  whatever,  as  by 
the  parade  one  made  about  dining  me,  which  I  took  to  be 
a  very  polite  and  roundabout  hint  never  to  trouble  him 
so  again.  I  think  I  shall  never  revisit  those  scenes.  I 
should  be  proud  to  have  for  the  motto  of  my  cabin  those 
lines  of  Spenser  which  one  of  my  visitors  inscribed  on 
a  yellow  walnut  leaf  for  a  card :  — 

*•  Arrived  there,  the  little  house  they  fill, 

Ne  looke  for  entertainment  where  none  was ; 
Rest  is  their  feast,  and  all  things  at  their  will : 
The  noblest  mind  the  best  contentment  has." 

When  Winslow,  afterward  governor  of  the  Plymouth 
Colony,  went  with  a  companion  on  a  visit  of  ceremony 
to  Massassoit  on  foot  through  the  woods,  and  arrived 
tired  and  hungry  at  his  lodge,  they  were  well  received 
by  the  king,  but  nothing  was  said  about  eating  that  day. 
When  the  night  arrived,  to  quote  their  own  words,  — 
"  He  laid  us  on  the  bed  with  himself  and  his  wife,  they 
at  the  one  end  and  we  at  the  other,  it  being  only 
plank,  laid  a  foot  from  the  ground,  and  a  thin  mat  upon 
them.  Two  more  of  his  chief  men,  for  want  of  room, 
pressed  by  and  upon  us;  so  that  we  were  worse  weary 
of  our  lodging  than  of  our  journey."  At  one  o'clock 
the  next  day  Massassoit  "  brought  two  fishes  that  he  had 
shot,"  about  thrice  as  big  as  a  bream;  "these  being 
boiled,  there  were  at  least  forty  looked  for  a  share  in 
them.  The  most  ate  of  them.  This  meal  only  we  had 
in  two  nights  and  a  day ;  and  had  not  one  of  us  bought 
a  partridge,  we  had  taken  our  journey  fasting."  Fear 
ing  that  they  would  be  light-headed  for  want  of  food 


156  WALDEX. 

and  also  sleep,  owing  to  "  the  savages'  barbarous  singing 
(for  they  used  to  sing  themselves  asleep,)  "  and  that 
they  might  get  home  while  they  had  strength  to  travel, 
they  departed.  As  for  lodging,  it  is  true  they  were  but 
poorly  entertained,  though  what  they  found  an  incon 
venience  was  no  doubt  intended  for  an  honor ;  but  as  far 
as  eating  was  concerned,  I  do  not  see  how  the  Indians 
could  have  done  better.  They  had  nothing  to  eat  them 
selves,  and  they  were  wiser  than  to  think  that  apolo 
gies  could  supply  the  place  of  food  to  their  guests ;  so 
they  drew  their  belts  tighter  and  said  nothing  about  it. 
Another  time  when  Winslow  visited  them,  it  being  a 
season  of  plenty  with  them,  there  was  no  deficiency  in 
this  respect. 

As  for  men,  they  will  hardly  fail  one  any  where.  I 
had  more  visitors  while  I  lived  in  the  woods  than  at 
any  other  period  of  my  life ;  I  mean  that  I  had  some. 
I  met  several  there  under  more  favorable  circumstances 
than  I  could  any  where  else.  But  fewer  came  to  see 
me  upon  trivial  business.  In  this  respect,  my  company 
was  winnowed  by  my  mere  distance  from  town.  I  hud 
withdrawn  so  far  within  the  great  ocean  of  solitude, 
into  which  the  rivers  of  society  empty,  that  for  the 
most  part,  so  far  as  my  needs  were  concerned,  only  the 
finest  sediment  was  deposited  around  me.  Beside,  there 
were  wafted  to  me  evidences  of  unexplored  and  un 
cultivated  continents  on  the  other  side. 

Who  should  come  to  my  lodge  this  morning  but  a 
true  Homeric  or  Paphlagonian  man,  —  he  had  so  suit 
able  and  poetic  a  name  that  I  am  sorry  I  cannot  print 
it  here,  —  a  Canadian,  a  wood-chopper  and  post-maker, 
who  can  hole  fifty  posts  in  a  day,  who  made  his  last 
supper  on  a  wooelchuck  which  his  dog  caught.  He,  too, 


VISITORS.  157 

has  heard  of  Homer,  and,  "if  it  were  not  for  books/' 
would  "  not  know  what  to  dj  rainy  days,"  though  per 
haps  he  has  not  read  one  wholly  through  for  many 
rainy  seasons.  Some  priest  who  could  pronounce  the 
Greek  itself  taught  him  to  read  his  verse  in  the  testa 
ment  in  his  native  parish  far  away ;  and  now  I  must 
translate  to  him,  while  he  holds  the  book,  Achilles'  re 
proof  to  Patroclus  for  his  sad  countenance.  —  "Why 
are  }  ou  in  tears,  Patroclus,  like  a  young  girl  ?  "  — 

"  Or  have  you  alone  heard  some  news  from  Phthia  ? 
They  say  that  Menretius  lives  yet,  son  of  Actor, 
And  Peleus  lives,  son  of  ^Eacus,  among  the  Myrmidons, 
Either  of  whom  having  died,  we  should  greatly  grieve." 

He  says, "  That's  good."  He  has  a  great  bundle  of  white- 
oak  bark  under  his  arm  for  a  sick  man,  gathered  this 
Sunday  morning.  "  I  suppose  there's  no  harm  in  going 
after  such  a  thing  to-day,"  says  he.  To  him  Homer 
was  a  great  writer,  though  what  his  writing  was  about 
he  did  not  know.  A  more  simple  and  natural  man  it 
would  be  hard  to  find.  Vice  and  disease,  which  cast 
such  a  sombre  moral  hue  over  the  world,  seemed  to 
have  hardly  any  existence  for  him.  He  was  about 
twenty-eight  years  old,  and  had  left  Canada  and  his 
father's  house  a  dozen  years  before  to  work  in  the 
States,  and  earn  money  to  buy  a  farm  with  at  last,  per 
haps  in  his  native  country.  He  was  cast  in  the  coarsest 
mould;  a  stout  but  sluggish  body,  yet  gracefully  carried, 
with  a  thick  sunburnt  neck,  dark  bushy  hair,  and  dull 
Bleepy  blue  eyes,  which  were  occasionally  lit  up  with 
expression.  He  wore  a  flat  gray  cloth  cap,  a  dingy 
wool-colored  greatcoat,  and  cowhidf  boots.  He  was  a 
threat  consumer  of  meat,  usually  carrying  his  dinner  to 


I5tf  WALDEN. 

his  work  a  couple  of  miles  past  my  house,  —  for  he 
chopped  all  summer,  —  in  a  tin  pail ;  cold  meats,  often 
cold  woodchucks,  and  coffee  in  a  stone  bottle  which  dan 
gled  by  a  string  from  his  belt ;  and  sometimes  he  offered 
me  a  drink.  He  came  along  early,  crowing  my  bean- 
field,  though  without  anxiety  or  haste  to  get  to  his 
work,  such  as  Yankees  exhibit.  He  wasn't  a-going  to 
hurt  himself.  He  didn't  care  if  he  only  earned  his 
board.  Frequently  he  would  leave  his  dinner  in  the 
bushes,  when  his  dog  had  caught  a  woodchuck  by  the 
way,  and  go  back  a  mile  and  a  half  to  dress  it  and  leave 
it  in  the  cellar  of  the  house  where  he  boarded,  after  de 
liberating  first  for  half  an  hour  whether  he  could  not 
sink  it  in  the  pond  safely  till  nightfall,  —  loving  to  dwell 
long  upon  these  themes.  He  would  say,  as  he  went  by 
in  the  morning,  "  How  thick  the  pigeons  are !  If 
working  every  day  were  not  my  trade,  I  could  get  all 
the  meat  I  should  want  by  hunting,  —  pigeons,  wood- 
chucks,  rabbits,  partridges,  —  by  gosh !  I  could  get  all 
I  should  want  for  a  week  in  one  day." 

He  was  a  skilful  chopper,  and  indulged  in  some 
flourishes  and  ornaments  in  his  art.  He  cut  his  trees 
level  and  close  to  the  ground,  that  the  sprouts  which 
came  up  afterward  might  be  more  vigorous  and  a  sled 
might  slide  over  the  stumps ;  and  instead  of  leaving  a 
whole  tree  to  support  his  corded  wood,  he  would  pare 
it  away  to  a  slender  stake  or  splinter  which  you  could 
break  off  with  your  hand  at  last. 

He  interested  me  because  he  was  so  quiet  and  soli 
tary  and  so  happy  withal ;  a  well  of  good  humor  and 
contentment  which  overflowed  at  his  eyes,  His  mirth 
was  without  alloy.  Sometimes  I  saw  him  at  his  work 
in  the  woods,  felling  trees,  and  he  would  greet  me  with 


VISITORS.  159 

a  laugh  of  inexpressible  satisfaction,  and  a  salutation  in 
Canadian  French,  though  he  spoke  English  as  well. 
When  I  approached  him  he  would  suspend  his  work, 
and  with  half-suppressed  mirth  lie  along  the  trunk  of 
a  pine  which  he  had  felled,  and,  peeling  off  the  inner 
bark,  roll  it  up  into  a  ball  and  chew  it  while  he  laughed 
and  talked.  Such  an  exuberance  of  animal  spirit*  had 
he  that  he  sometimes  tumbled  down  and  rolled  on  the 
ground  with  laughter  at  any  thing  which  made  him 
think  and  tickled  him.  Looking  round  upon  the  trees 
he  would  exclaim,  —  "  By  George  !  I  can  enjoy  myself 
well  enough  here  chopping ;  I  want  no  better  sport." 
Sometimes,  when  at  leisure,  he  amused  himself  all  day 
in  the  woods  with  a  pocket  pistol,  firing  salutes  to  him 
self  at  regular  intervals  as  he  walked.  In  the  winter 
he  had  a  fire  by  which  at  noon  he  warmed  his  coffee  in 
a  kettle ;  and  as  he  sat  on  a  log  to  eat  his  dinner  the 
chicadees  would  sometimes  come  round  and  alight  on 
his  arm  and  peck  at  the  potato  in  his  fingers ;  and  he 
said  that  he  "  liked  to  have  the  little  fellers  about 
him." 

In  him  the  animal  man  chiefly  was  developed.  In 
physical  endurance  and  contentment  he  was  cousin  to 
the  pine  and  the  rock.  I  asked  him  once  if  he  was  not 
sometimes  tired  at  night,  after  working  all  day ;  and  ho 
answered,  with  a  sincere  and  serious  look,  "  Gorrappit, 
I  never  was  tired  in  my  life."  But  the  intellectual  and 
what  is  called  spiritual  man  in  him  were  slumbering  as 
in  an  infant.  He  had  been  instructed  only  in  that  in 
nocent  and  ineffectual  way  in  which  the  Catholic  priests 
teach  the  aborigines,  by  which  the  pupil  is  never  edu 
cated  to  the  degree  of  consciousness,  but  only  to  the  de 
gree  of  trust  and  reverence,  and  a  child  is  not  made  a 


160  WALDEN. 

man,  but  kept  a  child.  When  Nature  made  him,  she 
gave  him 'a  strong  body  and  contentment  for  his  portion, 
and  propped  him  on  every  side  with  reverence  and  re 
liance,  that  he  might  live  out  his  threescore  years  and 
ten  a  child.  He  was  so  genuine  and  unsophisticated 
that  no  introduction  would  serve  to  introduce  him,  more 
than  if  you  introduced  a  woodchuck  to  your  neighbor. 
He  had  got  to  find  him  out  as  you  did.  He  would  not 
play  any  part.  Men  paid  him  wages  for  work,  and  so 
helped  to  feed  and  clothe  him;  but  he  never  exchanged 
opinions  with  them.  He  was  so  simply  and  naturally 
humble  —  if  he  can  be  called  humble  who  never  as 
pires —  that  humility  was  no  distinct  quality  in  him, 
nor  could  he  conceive  of  it.  Wiser  men  were  demi 
gods  to  him.  If  you  told  him  that  such  a  one  was  com 
ing,  he  did  as  if  he  thought  that  any  thing  so  grand 
would  expect  nothing  of  himself,  but  take  all  the  re 
sponsibility  on  itself,  and  let  him  be  forgotten  still.  He 
never  heard  the  sound  of  praise.  He  particularly  rev 
erenced  the  writer  and  the  preacher.  Their  perform 
ances  were  miracles.  When  I  told  him  that  I  wrote 
considerably,  he  thought  for  a  long  time  that  it  was 
merely  the  handwriting  which  I  meant,  for  he  could 
write  a  remarkably  good  hand  himself.  I  sometimes 
found  the  name  of  his  native  parish  handsomely  written 
in  the  snow  by  the  highway,  with  the  proper  French 
accent,  and  knew  that  he  had  passed.  I  asked  him  if 
he  ever  wished  to  write  his  thoughts.  He  said  that  he 
had  read  and  written  letters  for  those  who  could  not,  but 
he  never  tried  to  write  thoughts,  —  no,  he  -joulcl  not,  he 
could  not  tell  what  to  put  first,  it  would  kill  him,  and  then 
there  was  spelling  to  be  attended  to  at  the  same  time  ! 
I  heard  that  a  distinguished  wise  man  and  reformer 


VISITORS.  161 

a^ked  him  if  he  did  not  want  the  world  to  be  changed ; 
but  he  answered  with  a  chuckle  of  surprise  in  his  Cana 
dian  accent,  not  knowing  that  the  question  had  ever 
been  entertained  before,  "  No,  I  like  it  well  enough." 
It  would  have  suggested  many  things  to  a  philoso 
pher  to  have  dealings  with  him.  To  a  stranger  he  ap 
peared  to  know  nothing  of  things  in  general ;  yet  I  some 
times  saw  in  him  a  man  whom  I  had  riot  seen  before, 
and  I  did  not  know  whether  he  was  as  wise  as  Shak- 
speare  or  as  simply  ignorant  as  a  child,  whether  to  sus 
pect  him  of  a  fine  poetic  consciousness  or  of  stupidity. 
A  townsman  told  me  that  when  he  met  him  sauntering 
through  the  village  in  his  small  close-fitting  cap,  and 
whistling  to  himself,  he  reminded  him  of  a  prince  in 
disguise. 

His  only  books  were  an  almanac  and  an  arithmetic, 
in  which  last  he  was  considerably  expert.  The  former 
was  a  sort  of  cyclopaedia  to  him,  which  he  supposed  to 
contain  an  abstract  of  human  knowledge,  as  indeed  it 
does  to  a  considerable  extent.  I  loved  to  sound  him  on 
the  various  reforms  of  the  day,  and  he  never  failed  to 
look  at  them  in  the  most  simple  and  practical  light.  He 
had  never  heard  of  such  things  before.  Could  he  do 
without  factories?  I  asked.  He  had  worn  the  home 
made  Vermont  gray,  he  said,  and  that  was  good.  Could 
he  dispense  with  tea  and  coffee  ?  Did  this  country  afford 
any  beverage  beside  water  ?  He  had  soaked  hemlock 
leaves  in  water  and  drank  it,  and  thought  that  was  bet 
ter  than  water  in  warm  weather.  When  I  asked  him 
if  he  could  do  without  money,  he  showed  the  con 
venience  of  money  in  such  a  way  as  to  suggest  and 
coincide  with  the  most  philosophical  accounts  of  the 
origin  of  this  institution,  and  the  very  derivation  of  tlui 
11 


162  WALDEN". 

word  pecunia.  If  an  ox  were  his  property,  and  he 
wished  to  get  needles  and  thread  at  the  store,  he  thought 
it  would  be  inconvenient  and  impossible  soon  to  go  on 
mortgaging  some  portion  of  the  creature  each  time  to 
that  amount.  He  could  defend  many  institutions  better 
than  any  philosopher,  because,  in  describing  them  as 
they  concerned  him,  he  gave  the  true  reason  for  their 
prevalence,  and  speculation  had  not  suggested  to  him 
any  other.  At  another  time,  hearing  Plato's  definition 
of  a  man,  —  a  biped  without  feathers,  —  and  that  one  ex 
hibited  a  cock  plucked  and  called  it  Plato's  man,  he 
thought  it  an  important  difference  that  the  knees  bent 
the  wrong  way.  He  would  sometimes  exclaim,  "  How 
I  love  to  talk  !  By  George,  I  could  talk  all  day  ! "  I 
asked  him  once,  when  I  had  not  seen  him  for  many 
months,  if  he  had  got  a  new  idea  this  summer.  "  Good 
Lord,"  said  he,  "  a  man  that  has  to  work  as  I  do,  if  he 
does  not  forget  the  ideas  he  has  had,  he  will  do  well. 
May  be  the  man  you  hoe  with  is  inclined  to  race ;  then, 
by  gorry,  your  mind  must  be  there ;  you  think  of  weeds." 
He  would  sometimes  ask  me  first  on  such  occasions,  if 
I  had  made  any  improvement.  One  winter  day  I  asked 
him  if  he  was  always  satisfied  with  himself,  wishing  to 
suggest  a  substitute  within  him  for  the  priest  without, 
and  some  higher  motive  for  living.  "  Satisfied ! "  said 
he ;  "  some  men  are  satisfied  with  one  thing,  and  some 
with  another.  One  man,  perhaps,  if  he  has  got  enough, 
will  be  satisfied  to  sit  all  day  with  his  back  to  the  fire 
and  his  belly  to  the  table,  by  George  ! "  Yet  I  never, 
by  any  manoeuvring,  could  get  him  to  take  the  spiritual 
view  of  things ;  the  highest  that  he  appeared  to  con 
ceive  of  was  a  simple  expediency,  such  as  you  might 
expect  an  animal  to  appreciate ;  and  this,  practically,  is 


VISITORS.  163 

true  of  moiit  men.  If  I  suggested  any  improvement  in 
his  mode  of  life,  he  merely  answered,  without  express 
ing  any  regret,  that  it  was  too  late.  Yet  he  thorough 
ly  believed  in  honesty  and  the  like  virtues. 

There  was  a  certain  positive  originality,  however 
slight,  to  be  detected  in  him,  and  I  occasionally  observed 
that  he  was  thinking  for  himself  and  expressing  his  own 
opiition,  a  phenomenon  so  rare  that  I  would  any  day 
walk  ten  miles  to  observe  it,  and  it  amounted  to  the 
re-origination  of  many  of  the  institutions  of  society. 
Though  he  hesitated,  and  perhaps  failed  to  express  him 
self  distinctly,  he  always  had  a  presentable  thought  be 
hind.  Yet  his  thinking  was  so  primitive  and  immersed 
in  his  animal  life,  that,  though  more  promising  than  a 
merely  learned  man's,  it  rarely  ripened  to  any  thing 
which  can  be  reported.  He  suggested  that  there  might 
be  men  of  genius  in  the  lowest  grades  of  life,  however 
permanently  humble  and  illiterate,  who  take  their  own 
view  always,  or  do  not  pretend  to  see  at  all ;  who  are 
as  bottomless  even  as  Walden  Pond  was  thought  to  be, 
though  they  may  be  dark  and  muddy. 


Many  a  traveller  came  out  of  his  way  to  see  me  and 
the  inside  of  my  house,  and,  as  an  excuse  for  calling, 
asked  for  a  glass  of  water.  I  told  them  that  I  drank  at 
the  pond,  and  pointed  thither,  offering  to  lend  them  a 
dipper.  Far  off  as  I  lived,  I  was  not  exempted  from 
that  annual  visitation  which  occurs,  methinks,  about  the 
first  of  April,  when  every  body  is  on  the  move  ;  and  I 
had  my  share  of  good  luck,  though  there  were  some 
curious  specimens  among  my  visitors.  Half-witted  men 
from  the  almshouse  and  elsewhere  came  to  see  me ;  but 


164  WALDEN. 

1  endeavored  tj  make  them  exercise  all  the  wit  they 
had,  and  make  their  confessions  to  me ;  in  such  cases 
making  wit  the  theme  of  our  conversation ;  and  so  was 
compensated.  Indeed,  I  found  some  of  them  to  be  wise'r 
than  the  so  called  overseers  of  the  poor  and  selectmen 
of  the  town,  and  thought  it  was  time  that  the  tables 
were  turned.  With  respect  to  wit,  I  learned  that 
there  was  not  much  difference  between  the  half  and 
the  whole.  One  day,  in  particular,  an  inoffensive, 
simple-minded  pauper,  whom  with  others  I  had  often 
seen  used  as  fencing  stuff,  standing  or  sitting  on  a  bushel 
in  the  fields  to  keep  cattle  and  himself  from  straying, 
visited  me,  and  expressed  a  wish  to  live  as  I  did.  He 
told  me,  with  the  utmost  simplicity  and  truth,  quite 
superior,  or  rather  inferior,  to  any  thing  that  is  called 
humility,  that  he  was  "  deficient  in  intellect."  These 
were  his  words.  The  Lord  had  made  him  so,  yet  he 
supposed  the  Lord  cared  as  much  for  him  as  for 
another.  "  I  have  always  been  so,"  said  he,  "  from  my 
childhood  ;  I  never  had  much  mind ;  I  was  not  like  other 
children ;  I  am  weak  in  the  head.  It  was  the  Lord's 
will,  I  suppose."  And  there  he  was  to  prove  the  truth 
of  his  words.  He  was  a  metaphysical  puzzle  to  me.  I 
have  rarely  met  a  fellow-man  on  such  promising  ground, 
—  it  was  so  simple  and  sincere  and  so  true  all  that  he 
said.  And,  true  enough,  in  proportion  as  he  appeared 
to  humble  himself  was  he  exalted.  I  did  not  know  at 
first  but  it  was  the  result  of  a  wise  policy.  It  seemed 
that  from  such  a  basis  of  truth  and  frankness  as  the  poor 
weak-headed  pauper  had  laid,  our  intercourse  might  go 
forward  to  something  better  than  the  intercourse  of  sages 
I  had  some  guests  from  those  not  reckoned  commonly 
among  the  town's  poor,  but  who  should  be;  who  are 


VISITORS.  165 

among  'the  world's  poor,  at  any  rate ;  guests  who  appeal, 
not  to  your  hospitality,  but  to  your  hospitalality ;  who 
earnestly  wish  to  be  helped,  and  preface  their  appeal 
with  the  information  that  they  are  resolved,  for  one 
thing,  never  to  help  themselves.  I  require  of  a  visitor 
that  he  be  not  actually  starving,  though  he  may  have 
the  very  best  appetite  in  the  world,  however  he  got  it- 
Objects  of  charity  are  not  guests.  Men  who  did  not 
know  when  their  visit  had  terminated,  though  I  went 
about  my  business  again,  answering  them  from  greater 
and  greater  remoteness.  Men  of  almost  every  degree 
of  wit  called  on  me  in  the  migrating  season.  Some 
who  had  more  wits  than  they  knew  what  to  do  with ; 
runaway  slaves  with  plantation  manners,  who  listened 
from  time  to  time,  like  the  fox  in  the  fable,  as  if  they 
heard  the  hounds  a-baying  on  their  track,  and  looked 
a  t  me  beseechingly,  as  much  as  to  say,  — 

"  0  Christian,  will  you  send  me  back  ? " 

One  real  runaway  slave,  among  the  rest,  whom  I 
helped  to  forward  toward  the  northstar.  Men  of  one 
idea,  like  a  hen  with  one  chicken,  and  that  a  duckling ; 
men  of  a  thousand  ideas,  and  unkempt  heads,  like  those 
hens  which  are  made  to  take  charge  of  a  hundred 
chickens,  all  in  pursuit  of  one  bug,  a  score  of  them 
lost  in  every  morning's  dew,  —  and  become  frizzled 
and  mangy  in  consequence ;  men  of  ideas  instead  of 
legs,  a  sort  of  intellectual  centipede  that  made  you 
crawl  all  over.  One  man  proposed  a  book  in  which 
visitors  should  write  their  names,  as  at  the  White  Moun 
tains  ;  but,  alas !  I  have  too  good  a  memory  to  make  that 
recessary. 


1C6  "WALDEN. 

I  could  not  but  notice  some  of  the  peculiarities  of 
my  visitors.  Girls  and  boys  and  young  women  gen 
erally  seemed  glad  to  be  in  the  woods.  They  looked 
in  the  pond  and  at  the  flowers,  and  improved  their 
time.  Men  of  business,  even  farmers,  thought  only  of 
solitude  and  employment,  and  of  the  great  distance  at 
which  I  dwelt  from  something  or  other;  and  though 
they  said  that  they  loved  a  ramble  in  the  woods  occca- 
sionally,  it  was  obvious  that  they  did  not.  Restless 
committed  men,  whose  time  was  all  taken  up  in  getting 
a  living  or  keeping  it ;  ministers  who  spoke  of  God  as 
if  they  enjoyed  a  monopoly  of  the  subject,  who  could 
not  bear  all  kinds  of  opinions ;  doctors,  lawyers,  uneasy 
housekeepers  who  pried  into  my  cupboard  and  bed 

when  I  was  out,  —  how  came  Mrs. to  know  that 

my  sheets  were  not  as  clean  as  hers?  —  young  men 
who  had  ceased  to  be  young,  and  had  concluded  that 
it  was  safest  to  follow  the  beaten  track  of  the  profes 
sions,  —  all  these  generally  said  that  it  was  not  possible 
to  do  so  much  good  in  my  position.  Ay !  there  was 
the  rub.  The  old  and  infirm  and  the  timid,  of  whatever 
age  or  sex,  thought  most  of  sickness,  and  sudden  acci 
dent  and  death ;  to  them  life  seemed  full  of  danger,  — 
what  danger  is  there  if  you  don't  think  of  any  ?  —  and 
they  thought  that  a  prudent  man  would  carefully  select 
the  safest  position,  where  Dr.  B.  might  be  on  hand  at  a 
moment's  warning.  To  them  the  village  was  literally 
a  com-munity,  a  league  for  mutual  defence,  and  you 
would  suppose  that  they  would  not  go  a-huckleberrying 
without  a  medicine  chest.  The  amount  of  it  is,  if  a 
man  is  alive,  there  is  always  danger  that  he  may  die, 
though  the  danger  must  be  allowed  to  be  less  in  pro 
portion  as  he  is  dead-and-alive  to  begin  with.  A  man 


VISITORS.  167 

sits  as  many  risks  as  he  runs.  Finally,  there  were  the 
self-styled  reformers,  the  greatest  bores  of  all,  wh« 
thought  that  "I  was  forever  singing,  — 

This  is  the  house  that  I  built ; 

This  is  the  man  that  lives  in  the  house  that  I  built ; 

but  they  did  not  know  that  the  third  line  was,  — 

These  are  the  folks  that  worry  the  man 
That  lives  in  the  house  that  I  built. 

I  did  not  fear  the  hen-harriers,  for  I  kept  no  chickens 
but  I  feared  the  men-harriers  rather. 

I  had  more  cheering  visitors  than  the  last.  Children 
come  a-berrying,  railroad  men  taking  a  Sunday  morning 
walk  in  clean  shirts,  fishermen  and  hunters,  poets  and 
philosophers,  in  short,  all  honest  pilgrims,  who  came 
out  to  the  woods  for  freedom's  sake,  and  really  left  the 
village  behind,  I  was  ready  to  greet  with,  — "  Wel 
come,  Englishmen !  welcome,  Englishmen ! "  for  I  had 
had  communication  with  that  race. 


THE    BEAN-FIELD. 


MEANWHILE  my  beans,  the  length  of  whose  rows, 
added  together,  was  seven  miles  already  planted,  were 
impatient  to  be  hoed,  for  the  earliest  had  grown  consid 
erably  before  the  latest  were  in  the  ground ;  indeed  they 
were  not  easily  to  be  put  off.  What  was  the  meaning 
of  this  so  steady  and  self-respecting,  this  small  Hercu 
lean  labor,  I  knew  not.  I  came  to  love  my  rows,  my 
beans,  though  so  many  more  than  I  wanted.  They  at 
tached  me  to  the  earth,  and  so  I  got  strength  like  An 
taeus.  But  why  should  I  raise  them  ?  Only  Heaven 
knows.  This  was  my  curious  labor  all  summer,  —  to 
make  this  portion  of  the  earth's  surface,  which  had 
yielded  only  cinquefoil,  blackberries,  johnswort,  and  the 
like,  before,  sweet  wild  fruits  and  pleasant  flowers,  pro 
duce  instead  this  pulse.  What  shall  I  learn  of  beans 
or  beans  of  me  ?  I  cherish  them,  I  hoe  them,  early  and 
late  I  have  an  eye  to  them ;  and  this  is  my  day's  work. 
It  is  a  fine  broad  leaf  to  look  on.  My  auxiliaries  are 
the  dews  and  rains  which  water  this  dry  soil,  and  what 
fertility  is  in  the  soil  itself,  which  for  the  most  part  is 
lean  and  effete.  My  enemies  are  worms,  cool  days,  and 

(168) 


THE    BEAN-FIELD.  169, 

most  of  all  r.oodchucks.  The  last  have  nibbled  for  me 
a  quarter  of  an  acre  clean.  But  what  right  had  I  to 
oust  johnswort  and  the  rest,  and  break  up  their  ancient 
herb  garden?  Soon,  however,  the  remaining  beans 
will  be  too  tough  for  them,  and  go  forward  to  meet  new 
foes. 

When  I  was  four  years  old,  as  I  well  remember, 
J.  was  brought  from  Boston  to  this  my  native  town, 
through  these  very  woods  and  this  field,  to  the  pond. 
It  is  one  of  the  oldest  scenes  stamped  on  my  memory. 
And  now  to-night  my  flute  has  waked  the  echoes  over 
that  very  water.  The  pines  still  stand  here  older  than 
I ;  or,  if  some  have  fallen,  I  have  cooked  my  supper  with 
their  stumps,  and  a  new  growth  is  rising  all  around,  pre 
paring  another  aspect  for  new  infant  eyes.  Almost  the 
same  johnswort  springs  from  the  same  perennial  root  in 
this  pasture,  and  even  I  have  at  length  helped  to  clothe 
that  fabulous  landscape  of  my  infant  dreams,  and  one 
of  the  results  of  my  presence  and  influence  is  seen  in 
these  bean  leaves,  corn  blades,  and  potato  vines. 

I  planted  about  two  acres  and  a  half  of  upland ;  and 
as  it  was  only  about  fifteen  years  since  the  land  was 
cleared,  and  I  myself  had  got  out  two  or  three  cords 
of  stumps,  I  did  not  give  it  any  manure ;  but  in  the 
course  of  the  summer  it  appeared  by  the  arrow-heads 
which  I  turned  up  in  hoeing,  that  an  extinct  nation  had 
anciently  dwelt  here  and  planted  corn  and  beans  ere 
white  men  came  to  clear  the  land,  and  so,  to  some  ex 
tent,  had  exhausted  the  soil  for  this  very  crop. 

Before  yet  any  woodchuck  or  squirrel  had  run 
across  the  road,  or  the  sun  had  got  above  the  shrub- 
oaks,  while  all  the  dew  was  on,  though  the  farmers 
warned  me  against  it,  —  I  would  advise  you  to  do  all 


170  WALDKN. 

your  work  if  possible  while  the  dew  is  on,  —  I  began 
to  level  the  ranks  of  haughty  weeds  in  ray  bean-field 
and  throw  dust  upon  their  heads.  Early  in  the  morning 
I  worked  barefooted,  dabbling  like  a  plastic  artist  in  the 
dewy  and  crumbling  sand,  but  later  in  the  day  the  sun 
blistered  my  feet.  There  the  sun  lighted  me  to  hoe 
beans,  pacing  slowly  backward  and  forward  over  that 
yellow  gravelly  upland,  between  the  long  green  rows, 
fifteen  rods,  the  one  end  terminating  in  a  shrub  oak 
copse  where  I  could  rest  in  the  shade,  the  other  in  a 
blackberry  field  where  the  green  berries  deepened  their 
tints  by  the  time  I  had  made  another  bout.  Removing 
the  weeds,  putting  fresh  soil  about  the  bean  stems,  and 
encouraging  this  weed  which  I  had  sown,  making  the 
yellow  soil  express  its  summer  thought  in  bean  leaves 
and  blossoms  rather  than  in  wormwood  and  piper  and  mil 
let  grass,  making  the  earth  say  beans  instead  of  grass, 
—  this  was  my  daily  work.  As  I  had  little  aid  from 
horses  or  cattle,  or  hired  men  or  boys,  or  improved  im 
plements  of  husbandly,  I  was  much  slower,  and  became 
much  more  intimate  with  my  beans  than  usual.  But 
labor  of  the  hands,  even  when  pursued  to  the  verge  of 
drudgery,  is  perhaps  never  the  worst  form  of  idleness. 
Jt  has  a  constant  and  imperishable  moral,  and  to  the 
scholar  it  yields  a  classic  result.  A  very  agricola  labo- 
riosus  was  I  to  travellers  bound  westward  through  Lin 
coln  and  Wayland  to  nobody  knows  where ;  they  sitting 
at  their  ease  in  gigs,  with  elbows  on  knees,  and  reins 
loosely  hanging  in  festoons ;  I  the  home-staying,  laborious 
native  of  the  soil.  But  soon  my  homestead  was  out  of 
their  sight  and  thought.  It  was  the  only  open  and  cul- 
tivat?d  field  for  a  great  distance  on  either  side  of  the 
road,  so  they  made  the  most  of  it ;  and  sometimes  the 


THE    BEAN-FIELD.  171 

man  in  *he  field  heard  more  of  travellers'  gossip  and 
comment  than  was  meant  for  his  ear :  "  Beans  so  late  5 
peas  so  late  !"  —  for  I  continued  to  plant  when  others 
had  began  to  hoe,  —  the  ministerial  husbandman  had 
not  suspected  it.  "  Corn,  my  boy,  for  fodder ;  corn 
for  fodder."  "  Does  he  live  there  ? "  asks  the  black 
bonnet  of  the  gray  coat ;  and  the  hard-featured  farm 
er  reins  up  his  grateful  dobbin  to  inquire  what  you 
are  doing  where  he  sees  no  manure  in  the  furrorv, 
and  recommends  a  little  chip  dirt,  or  any  little  waste 
stuff,  or  it  may  be  ashes  or  plaster.  Bat  here  were 
two  acres  and  a  half  of  furrows,  and  only  a  hoe 
for  cart  and  two  hands  to  draw  it,  —  there  being  an  aver 
sion  to  other  carts  and  horses,  —  and  chip  dirt  far  away. 
Fellow-travellers  as  they  rattled  by  compared  it  aloud 
with  the  fields  which  they  had  passed,  so  that  I  came 
to  know  how  I  stood  in  the  agricultural  world.  This 
was  one  field  not  in  Mr.  Coleman's  report.  And,  by  the 
way,  who  estimates  the  value  of  the  crop  which  Nature 
yields  in  the  still  wilder  fields  unimproved  by  man? 
The  crop  of  English  hay  is  carefully  weighed,  the 
moisture  calculated,  the  silicates  and  the  potash ;  but  in  all 
dells  and  pond  holes  in  the  woods  and  pastures  and 
swamps  grows  a  rich  and  various  crop  only  unreaped  by 
man.  Mine  was,  as  it  were,  the  connecting  link  be 
tween  wild  and  cultivated  fields ;  as  some  states  are 
civilized,  and  others  half-civilized,  and  others  savage  or 
barbarous,  so  my  field  was,  though  not  in  a  bad  sense, 
a  half-cultivated  field.  They  were  beans  cheerfully 
returning  to  their  wild  and  primitive  state  that  I  culti 
vated,  and  my  hoe  played  the  Ram  des  Vaches  for  them. 
Near  at  hand,  upon  the  topmost  spray  of  a  birch, 
sings  the  b^own-thrasher — or  red  mavis,  as  some  love  to 


172  WA  \.DEN. 

call  him  —  all  tLe  morning,  glad  of  your  tociety,  that 
would  find  out  another  farmer's  field  if  yours  were  not 
here.  While  you  are  planting  the  seed,  he  cries, — 
"  Drop  it,  drop  it,  —  cover  it  up,  cover  it  up,  —  pull  it 
up,  pull  it  up,  pull  it  up."  But  this  was  not  corn,  and  so 
it  was  safe  from  such  enemies  as  he.  You  may  wonder 
what  his  rigmarole,  his  amateur  Paganini  performances 
on  one  strii:g  or  on  twenty,  have  to  do  with  your  planting, 
and  yet  prefer  it  to  leached  ashes  or  plaster.  It  \vas  a 
cheap  sort  of  top  dressing  in  which  I  had  entire  faith. 

As  I  drew  a  still  fresher  soil  about  the  rows  with  my 
hoe,  I  disturbed  the  a&hes  of  unchronicled  nations  who 
in  primeval  years  lived  under  these  -heavens,  and  their 
small  implements  of  war  and  hunting  were  brought  to 
the  light  of  this  modern  day.  They  lay  mingled  with 
other  natural  stones,  some  of  which  bore  the  marks  of 
having  been  burned  by  Indian  fires,  and  some  by  vhe 
sun,  and  also  bits  of  pottery  and  glass  brought  hither 
by  the  recent  cultivators  of  the  soil.  When  my  hoe 
tinkled  against  the  stones,  that  music  echoed  to  the 
woods  and  the  sky,  and  was  an  accompaniment  to  my 
labor  which  yielded  an  instant  and  immeasurable  crop. 
It  was  no  longer  beans  that  I  hoed,  nor  I  that  hoed 
beans ;  and  I  remembered  with  as  much  pity  as  pride, 
if  I  remembered  at  all,  my  acquaintances  who  had  gone 
to  the  city  to  attend  the  oratorios.  The  night-hawk  cir 
cled  overhead  in  the  sunny  afternoons  —  for  I  sometimes 
made  a  day  of  it  —  like  a  mote  in  the  eye,  or  in  heav 
en's  eye,  falling  from  time  to  time  with  a  swoop  and  a 
sound  as  if  the  heavens  were  rent,  torn  at  last  to  very 
rags  and  tatters,  and  yet  a  seamless  cope  remained ; 
small  imps  that  fill  the  air  and  lay  their  eggs  on  the 
ground  on  bare  sand  or  rocks  on  the  tops  of  hills,  where 


THE    BEAN-FIELD.  173 

few  hav?  found  them;  graceful  and  slender  like  rip 
ples  caught  up  from  the  pond,  as  leaves  are  raised  by 
the  wind  to  float  in  the  heavens  ;  such  kindredship  is  in 
Nature.  The  hawk  is  aerial  brother  of  the  wave  which 
he  sails  over  and  surveys,  those  his  perfect  air-inflated 
wings  answering  to  the  elemental  unfledged  pinions  of 
the  sea.  Or  sometimes  I  watched  a  pair  of  hen-hawks 
circling  high  in  the  sky,  alternately  soaring  and  descend 
ing,  approaching  and  leaving  one  another,  as  if  they 
were  the  imbodiment  of  my  own  thoughts.  Or  I  was 
attracted  by  the  passage  of  wild  pigeons  from  this  wood 
to  that,  with  a  slight  quivering  winnowing  sound  and 
carrier  haste ;  or  from  under  a  rotten  stump  my  hoe 
turned  up  a  sluggish  portentous  and  outlandish  spotted 
salamander,  a  trace  of  Egypt  and  the  Nile,  yet  our  con 
temporary.  When  I  paused  to  lean  on  my  hoe,  these 
sounds  and  sights  I  heard  and  saw  any  where  in  the 
row,  a  part  of  the  inexhaustible  entertainment  which 
the  country  offers. 

On  gala  days  the  town  fires  its  great  guns,  which 
echo  like  popguns  to  these  woods,  and  some  waifs  of 
martial  music  occasionally  penetrate  thus  far.  To  me, 
away  there  in  my  bean-field  at  the  other  end  of  the 
town,  the  big  guns  sounded  as  if  a  puff  ball  had  burst ; 
and  when  there  was  a  military  turnout  of  which  I  was 
ignorant,  I  have  sometimes  had  a  vague  sense  all  the 
day  of  some  sort  of  itching  and  disease  in  the  horizon, 
as  if  some  eruption  would  break  out  there  soon,  either 
scarlatina  or  canker-rash,  until  at  length  some  more 
favorable  puff  of  wind,  making  haste  over  the  fields  and 
up  the  Wayland  road,  brought  me  information  of  the 
"  trainers."  It  seemed  by  the  distant  hum  as  if  some* 
body's  bees  had  swarmed,  and  that  the  neighbors, 


174  WALDEN. 

according  to  Virgil's  advice,  by  a  faint  tintinnabulum 
upon  the  rao^t  sonorous  of  their  domestic  utensils,  were 
endeavoring  to  call  them  down  into  the  hive  again. 
And  when  the  sound  died  quite  away,  and  the  hum 
had  ceased,  and  the  most  favorable  breezes  told  no  tale, 
I  knew  that  they  had  got  the  last  drone  of  them  all 
safely  into  the  Middlesex  hive,  and  that  now  their 
minds  were  bent  on  the  honey  with  which  it  was 
smeared. 

I  felt  proud  to  know  that  the  liberties  of  Massachu 
setts  and  of  our  fatherland  were  in  such  safe  keeping ; 
and  as  I  turned  to  my  hoeing  again  I  was  filled  with  an 
inexpressible  confidence,  and  pursued  my  labor  cheer 
fully  with  a  calm  trust  in  the  future. 

When  there  were  several  bands  of  musicians,  it 
sounded  as  if  all  the  village  was  a  vast  bellows,  and 
all  the  buildings  expanded  and  collapsed  alternately 
with  a  din.  But  sometimes  it  was  a  really  noble  and 
inspiring  strain  that  reached  these  woods,  and  the 
trumpet  that  sings  of  fame,  and  I  felt  as  if  I  could 
spit  a  Mexican  with  a  good  relish,  —  for  why  should  we 
always  stand  for  trifles  ? — and  looked  round  for  a  wood- 
chuck  or  a  skunk  to  exercise  my  chivalry  upon.  These 
martial  strains  seemed  as  far  away  as  Palestine,  and 
reminded  me  of  a  march  of  crusaders  in  the  horizon, 
with  a  slight  tantivy  and  tremulous  motion  of  the  elm- 
tree  tops  which  overhang  the  village.  This  was  one 
if  the  great  days ;  though  the  sky  had  from  my  clearing 
«jnly  the  same  everlastingly  great  look  that  it  wears 
daily,  and  I  saw  no  difference  in  it. 

It  was  a  singular  experience  that  long  acquaintance 
which  I  cultivated  with  beans,  what  with  planting,  and 
hoeing,  and  harvesting,  and  threshing,  a?i  picking  over. 


THE    BEAN-FIELD.  175 

and  selling  them,  —  the  last  was  the  hardest  of  all,  — 
I  might  add  eating,  for  I  did  taste.  I  was  deter 
mined  to  know  b^ans.  When  they  were  growing,  1 
used  to  hoe  from  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  till  noon, 
and  commonly  spent  the  rest  of  the  day  about  other 
affairs.  Consider  the  intimate  and  curious  acquaintance 
one  makes  with  various  kinds  of  weeds,  —  it  will  bear 
Borne  iteration  in  the  account,  for  there  was  no  little 
iteration  in  the  labor,  —  disturbing  their  delicate  organi 
zations  so  ruthlessly,  and  making  such  invidious  dis 
tinctions  with  his  hoe,  levelling  whole  ranks  of  one 
Bpacies,  and  sedulously  cultivating  another.  That's 
Roman  wormwood,  —  that's  pigweed,  —  that's  sorrel, — 
that's  piper-grass,  —  have  at  him,  chop  him  up,  turn  his 
roots  upward  to  the  sun,  don't  let  him  have  a  fibre  in 
the  shade,  if  you  do  he'll  turn  himself  t'other  side  up 
and  be  as  green  as  a  leek  in  two  days.  A  long  war 
not  with  cranes,  but  with  weeds,  those  Trojans  who  had 
sun  and  rain  and  dews  on  their  side.  Daily  the  beans 
saw  me  come  to  their  rescue  armed  with  a  hoe,  and 
thin  the  ranks  of  their  enemies,  filling  up  the  trenches 
with  weedy  dead.  Many  a  lusty  crest-waving  Hector, 
that  towered  a  whole  foot  above  his  crowding  comrades, 
fell  before  my  weapon  and  rolled  in  the  dust. 

Those  summer  days  which  some  of  my  contempora 
ries  devoted  to  the  fine  arts  in  Boston  or  Rome,  and 
others  to  contemplation  in  India,  and  others  to  trade  in 
London  or  New  York,  I  thus,  with  the  other  farmers 
of  New  England,  devoted  to  husbandry.  Not  that  I 
wanted  beans  to  eat,  for  I  am  by  nature  a  Pythagorean, 
so  far  as  beans  are  concerned,  whether  they  mean  por« 
ridge  or  voting,  and  exchanged  them  for  rice ;  but, 
perchance,  as  sj  tme  must  work  in  fields  if  only  for  the 


176  WALDEN. 

sake  of  tropes  and  expression,  to  serve  a  parable-maker 
one  day.  It  was  on  the  whole  a  rare  amusement, 
which,  continued  too  long,  might  have  become  a  dissipa 
tion.  Though  I  gave  them  no  manure,  and  did  not  hoe 
them  all  once,  I  hoed  them  unusually  well  as  far  as  I 
went,  and  was  paid  for  it  in  the  end,  "  there  being  in 
truth,"  as  Evelyn  says,  "  no  compost  or  loetation  what 
soever  comparable  to  this  continual  motion,  repastina- 
tion,  and  turning  of  the  mould  with  the  spade."  "  The 
earth,"  he  adds  elsewhere,  "  especially  if  fresh,  has  a 
certain  magnetism  in  it,  by  which  it  attracts  the  salt, 
power,  or  virtue  (call  it  either)  which  gives  it  life,  and 
is  the  logic  of  all  the  labor  and  stir  we  keep  about  it, 
to  sustain  us ;  all  dungings  and  other  sordid  temperings 
being  but  the  vicars  succedaneous  to  this  improvement." 
Moreover,  this  being  one  of  those  "  worn-out  and  ex 
hausted  lay  fields  which  enjoy  their  sabbath,"  had 
perchance,  as  Sir  Kenelm  Digby  thinks  likely,  attracted 
"  vital  spirits  "  from  the  air.  I  harvested  twelve  bushels 
of  beans. 

But  to  be  more  particular,  for  it  is  complained  that 
Mr.  Coleman  has  reported  chiefly  the  expensive  ex 
periments  of  gentlemen  farmers,  my  outgoes  were,  — 

For  a  hoe, $  0  54 

Ploughing,  harrowing,  and  furrowing,        .       .  "  7  50,  Too  much 

Beans  for  seed .    3  12£ 

Potatoes  "...  1  33 

Peas         "  0  40 

Turnip  sssd, 0  06 

White  line  for  crow  fence,  0  02 

Horse  cultivator  and  boy  three  hours,       ...         1  00 
Horse  and  cart  to  get  crop, 0  75 

In  all, $14  72i 

My  income  was,  (patrem  familias  vendacem,  noa 
emacem  esse  oportet,^  from 


THE    BEAN-FIELD.  177 

Pfl.ie  bushels  and  twelve  quarts  of  beans  sold, .        .    $16  94 

Five       "        large  potatoes, 2  50 

Nine       "        small, 2  25 

Grass, 1  00 

Stalks, 0  75 

In  all, $23  44 

Leaving  a  pecuniary  profit,  as  I  have  elsewhere  said,  of  $8  71|. 

This  is  tli  9  result  of  my  experience  in  raising  beans. 
Plant  the  common  small  white  bush  bean  about  the 
first  of  June,  in  rows  three  feet  by  eighteen  inches 
apart,  being  careful  to  select  fresh  round  and  unmixed 
seed.  First  look  out  for  worms,  and  supply  vacancies 
by  planting  anew.  Then  look  out  for  woodchucks,  if 
it  is  an  exposed  place,  for  they  will  nibble  off  the 
earliest  tender  leaves  almost  clean  as  they  go ;  and  again, 
when  the  young  tendrils  make  their  appearance,  they 
have  notice  of  it,  and  will  shear  them  off  with  both 
buds  and  young  pods,  sitting  erect  like  a  squirrel. 
But  above  all  harvest  as  early  as  possible,  if  you  would 
escape  frosts  and  have  a  fair  and  salable  crop;  you 
may  save  much  loss  by  this  means. 

This  further  experience  also  I  gained.  I  said  to 
myself,  I  will  not  plant  beans  and  corn  with  so  much 
industry  another  summer,  but  such  seeds,  if  the  seed  is 
not  lost,  as  sincerity,  truth,  simplicity,  faith,  innocence, 
and  the  like,  and  see  if  they  will  not  grow  in  this  soil, 
even  with  less  toil  and  manurance,  and  sustain  me,  for 
surely  it  has  not  been  exhausted  for  these  crops.  Alas ! 
I  said  this  to  myself;  but  now  another  summer  is  gone, 
and  another,  and  ^another,  and  I  am  obliged  to  say  to 
you,  Reader,  that  the  seeds  which  I  planted,  if  indeed 
they  were  the  seeds  of  those  virtues,  were  wormeaten  01 
had  lost  their  vitality,  and  so  did  not  come  up.  Com 
monly  men  will  only  be  brave  as  their  father?  were 
12 


178  WALDEN. 

brave,  or  timid.  This  generation  is  very  sure  to  plant 
corn  and  beans  each  new  year  precisely  as  the  Indians 
did  centuries  ago  and  taught  the  first  settlers  to  do,  as 
if  there  were  a  fate  in  it.  I  saw  an  old  man  the  other 
day,  to  my  astonishment,  making  the  holes  with  a  hoe 
for  the  seventieth  time  at  least,  and  not  for  himself  to 
lie  down  in !  But  why  should  not  the  New  Englander 
try  new  adventures,  and  not  lay  so  much  stress  on  his 
grain,  his  potato  and  grass  crop,  and  his  orchards, — 
raise  other  crops  than  these  ?  Why  concern  ourselves 
so  much  about  our  beans  for  seed,  and  not  be  concerned 
at  all  about  a  new  generation  of  men  ?  We  should  real 
ly  be  fed  and  cheered  if  when  we  met  a  man  we  were 
sure  to  see  that  some  of  the  qualities  which  I  have 
named,  which  we  all  prize  more  than  those  other  pro 
ductions,  but  which  are  for  the  most  part  broadcast  and 
floating  in  the  air,  had  taken  root  and  grown  in  him. 
Here  comes  such  a  subtile  and  ineffable  quality,  for  in 
stance,  as  truth  or  justice,  though  the  slightest  amount 
or  new  variety  of  it,  along  the  road.  Our  ambassadors 
should  be  instructed  to  send  home  such  seeds  as  these, 
and  Congress  help  to  distribute  them  over  all  the  land. 
We  should  never  stand  upon  ceremony  with  sincerity. 
We  should  never  cheat  and  insult'  and  banish  one  an 
other  by  our  meanness,  if  there  were  present  the  kernel 
of  worth  and  friendliness.  We  should  not  meet  thus  in 
haste.  Most  men  I  do  not  meet  at  all,  for  they  seem 
not  to  have  time ;  they  are  busy  about  their  beans.  We 
would  not  deal  with  a  man  thus  plodding  ever,  leaning 
on  a  hoe  or  a  spade  as  a  staff  between  his  work,  not  as 
a  mushroom,  but  partially  risen  out  of  the  earth,  some 
thing  more  than  erect,  like  swallows  alighted  and  walk 
ing  on  the  ground :  — 


THE    BEAN-FIELD.  179 

"  And  as  he  spake,  his  wings  would  now  and  then 
Spread,  as  he  meant  to  fly,  then  close  again," 

BO  that  we  should  suspect  that  we  might  be  conversing 
with  an  angel.  Bread  may  not  always  nourish  us ;  but 
it  always  does  us  good,  it  even  takes  stiffness  out  of  our 
joints,  and  makes  us  supple  and  buoyant,  when  we  knew 
not  what  ailed  us,  to  recognize  any  generosity  in  man 
or  Nature,  to  share  any  unmixed  and  heroic  joy. 

Ancient  poetry  and  mythology  suggest,  at  least,  that 
husbandry  was  once  a  sacred  art ;  but  it  is  pursued  with 
irreverent  haste  and  heedlessness  by  us,  our  object  being 
to  have  large  farms  and  large  crops  merely.  We  have 
no  festival,  nor  procession,  nor  ceremony,  not  except 
ing  our  Cattle-shows  and  so  called  Thanksgivings,  by 
which  the  farmer  expresses  a  sense  of  the  sacredness 
of  his  calling,  or  is  reminded  of  its  sacred  origin.  It  is 
the  premium  and  the  feast  which  tempt  him.  He  sac 
rifices  not  to  Ceres  and  the  Terrestrial  Jove,  but  to  the 
infernal  Plutus  rather.  By  avarice  and  selfishness, 
and  a  grovelling  habit,  from  which  none  of  us  is  free,  of 
regarding  the  soil  as  property,  or  the  means  of  acquir 
ing  property  chiefly,  the  landscape  is  deformed,  hus 
bandry  is  degraded  with  us,  and  the  farmer  leads  the 
meanest  of  lives.  He  knows  Nature  but  as  a  robber. 
Cato  says  that  the  profits  of  agriculture  are  particularly 
pious  or  just,  (maximeque  pius  qucestus,)  and  according 
to  Varro  the  old  Romans  "  called  the  same  earth  Moth 
er  and  Ceres,  and  thought  that  they  who  cultivated  it 
led  a  pious  and  useful  life,  and  that  they  alone  were 
left  of  the  race  of  King  Saturn." 

We  are  wont  to  forget  that  the  sun  looks  on  our  cul 
tivated  fields  and  on  the  prairies  and  forests  without 


180  WALDEN. 

distinction.  They  all  reflect  and  y^jfo  Iris  rays  alike, 
and  the  former  make  but  a  small  part  of  the  glorious 
picture  which  he  beholds  in  his  daily  course.  In  hia 
view  the  earth  is  all  equally  cultivated  like  a  garden. 
Therefore  we  should  receive  the  benefit  of  his  light 
and  heat  with  a  corresponding  trust  and  magnanimity. 
What  though  I  value  the  seed  of  these  beans,  and  har 
vest  that  in  the  fall  of  the  year  ?  This  broad  field  which 
1  have  looked  at  so  long  looks  not  to  me  as  the  principal 
cultivator,  but  away  from  me  to  influences  more  genial  to 
it,  which  water  and  make  it  green.  These  beans  have 
results  which  are  not  harvested  by  me.  Do  they  not 
grow  for  woodchucks  partly?  The  ear  of  wheat,  (in 
Latin  spica,  obsoletely  speca,  from  spe,  hope,)  should  not 
be  the  only  hope  of  the  husbandman;  its  kernel  or 
grain  (granum,  from  gerendo,  bearing,)  is  not  all  that 
it  bears.  How,  then,  can  our  harvest  fail  ?  Shall  I  not 
rejoice  also  at  the  abundance  of  the  weeds  whose  seeds 
are  the  granary  of  the  birds.  ?  It  matters  little  com 
paratively  whether  the  fields  fill  the  farmer's  barns. 
The  true  husbandman  will  cease  from  anxiety,  as  the 
squirrels  manifest  no  concern  whether  the  woods  will 
bear  chestnuts  this  year  or  aot,  and  finish  his  labor  with 
every  day,  relinquishing  all  claim  to  the  produce  of  his 
fields,  and  sacrificing  hi  his  mind  not  only  his  first  but 
his  last  fruits  also. 


THE    VILLAGE. 


AFTER  hoeing,  or  perhaps  reading  and  writing,  in  tho 
forenoon,  I  usually  bathed  again  in  the  pond,  swimming 
across  one  of  its  coves  for  a  stint,  and  washed  the  dust 
of  labor  from  my  person,  or  smoothed  out  the  last  wrin 
kle  which  study  had  made,  and  for  the  afternoon  was  ab 
solutely  free.  Every  day  or  two  I  stroUed  to  the  vil 
lage  to  hear  some  of  the  gossip  which  is  incessantly 
going  on  there,  circulating  either  from  mouth  to  mouth, 
or  from  newspaper  to  newspaper,  and  which,  taken  in 
homo3Opathic  doses,  was  really  as  refreshing  in  its  way 
as  the  rustle  of  leaves  and  the  peeping  of  frogs.  As  I 
walked  in  the  woods  to  see  the  birds  and  squirrels,  so  I 
walked  in  the  village  to  see  the  men  and  boys ;  instead 
of  the  wind  among  the  pines  I  heard  the  carts  rattle. 
In  one  direction  from  my  house  there  was  a  colony  of 
muskrats  in  the  river  meadows ;  under  the  grove  of 
elms  and  buttonwoods  in  the  other  horizon  was  a  vil 
lage  of  busy  men,  as  curious  to  me  as  if  they  had  been 
prairie  dogs,  each  sitting  at  the  mouth  of  its  burrow,  or 
running  over  to  a  neighbor's  to  gossip.  I  went  there 
ii-e(|uently  to  observe  their  liable.  The  village  ap- 

(181) 


182  WALDEN. 

peared  to  me  a  great  news  room ;  and  on  one  side,  to 
support  it,  as  once  at  Redding  &  Company's  on  State 
Street,  they  kept  nuts  and  raisins,  or  salt  and  meal  and 
other  groceries.  Some  have  such  a  vast  appetite  for 
the  former  commodity,  that  is,  the  news,  and  such  sound 
digestive  organs,  that  they  can  sit  forever  in  public 
avenues  without  stirring,  and  let  it  simmer  and  whisper 
through  them  like  the  Etesian  winds,  or  as  if  inhaling 
ether,  it  only  producing  numbness  and  insensibility  to 
pain,  —  otherwise  it  would  often  be  painful  to  hear,  — 
without  affecting  the  consciousness.  I  hardly  ever 
failed,  when  I  rambled  through  the  village,  to  see  a  row 
of  such  worthies,  either  sitting  on  a  ladder  sunning  them 
selves,  with  their  bodies  inclined  forward  and  their  eyes 
glancing  along  the  line  this  way  and  that,  from  time  to 
time,  with  a  voluptuous  expression,  or  else  leaning 
against  a  barn  with  their  hands  in  their  pockets,  like 
caryatides,  as  if  to  prop  it  up.  They,  being  commonly 
out  of  doors,  heard  whatever  was  in  the  wind.  These 
are  the  coarsest  mills,  in  which  all  gossip  is  first  rudely 
digested  or  cracked  up  before  it  is  emptied  into  finer 
and  more  delicate  hoppers  within  doors.  I  observed  that 
the  vitals  of  the  village  were  the  grocery,  the  bar-room, 
the  post-office,  and  the  bank ;  and,  as  a  necessary  part 
of  the  machinery,  they  kept  a  bell,  a  big  gun,  and  a  fire- 
engine,  at  convenient  places ;  and  the  houses  were  so  ar 
ranged  as  to  make  the  most  of  mankind,  in  lanes  and 
fronting  one  another,  so  that  every  traveller  had  to  run 
the  gantlet,  and  every  man,  woman,  and  child  might  get  a 
lick  at  him.  Of  course,  those  who  were  stationed  near 
est  to  the  head  of  the  line,  where  they  could  most  see 
and  be  seen,  and  have  the  first  blow  at  him,  paid  the 
highest  prices  for  their  places ;  and  the  few  straggling 


THE    VILLAGE.  183 

inhabitants  in  the  outskirts,  where  long  gaps  :ti  the  line 
began  to  occur,  and  the  traveller  could  get  over  walls 
or  turn  aside  into  cow  paths,  and  so  escape,  paid  a  very 
slight  ground  or  window  tax.  Signs  were  hung  out 
on  all  sides  to  allure  him ;  some  to  catch  him  by  the 
appetite,  as  the  tavern  and  victualling  cellar  ;  some  by 
the  fancy,  as  the  dry  goods  store  and  the  jeweller's ;  and 
others  by  the  hair  or  the  feet  or  the  skirts,  as  the  bar 
ber,  the  shoemaker,  or  the  tailor.  Besides,  there  was  a 
still  more  terrible  standing  invitation  to  call  at  every 
one  of  these  houses,  and  company  expected  about  these 
times.  For  the  most  part  I  escaped  wonderfully  from 
these  dangers,  either  by  proceeding  at  once  boldly  and 
without  deliberation  to  the  goal,  as  is  recommended  to 
those  who  run  the  gantlet,  or  by  keeping  my  thoughts 
on  high  things,  like  Orpheus,  who,  "  loudly  singing  the 
praises  of  the  gods  to  his  lyre,  drowned  the  voices  of 
the  Sirens,  and  kept  out  of  danger."  Sometimes  I 
bolted  suddenly,  and  nobody  could  tell  my  whereabouts, 
for  I  did  not  stand  much  about  gracefulness,  and  never 
hesitated  at  a  gap  in  a  fence.  I  was  even  accustomed 
to  make  an  irruption  into  some  houses,  where  I  was  well 
entertained,  and  after  learning  the  kernels  and  very  last 
sieve-ful  of  news,  what  had  subsided,  the  prospects  of 
war  and  peace,  and  whether  the  world  was  likely  to  hold 
together  much  longer.  I  was  let  out  through  the  real 
avenues,  and  so  escaped  to  the  woods  again. 

It  was  very  pleasant,  when  I  staid  late  in  town,  to 
launch  myself  into  the  night,  especially  if  it  was  dark 
and  tempestuous,  and  set  sail  from  some  bright  village 
parlor  or  lecture  room,  with  a  bag  of  rye  or  Indian  meal 
upon  my  shoulder,  for  my  snug  harbor  in  the  woods, 
having  mude  all  tight  without  and  withdrawn  under 


184  WALDEN. 

hatches  with  a  merry  crew  of  thoughts,  leaving  only  my 
outer  man  at  the  helm,  or  even  tying  up  the  helm  when 
it  was  plain  sailing.  I  had  many  a  genial  thought  by 
the  cabin  fire  "  as  I  sailed."  I  was  never  cast  away 
nor  distressed  in  any  weather,  though  I  encountered 
some  severe  storms.  It  is  darker  in  the  woods,  even  in 
common  nights,  than  most  suppose.  I  frequently  had  to 
look  up  at  the  opening  between  the  trees  above  the  path 
in  order  to  learn  my  route,  and,  where  there  was  no  cart- 
path,  to  feel  with  my  feet  the  faint  track  which  I  had 
worn,  or  steer  by  the  known  relation  of  particular  trees 
which  I  felt  with  my  hands,  passing  between  two  pines 
for  instance,  not  more  than  eighteen  inches  apart,  in  the 
midst  of  the  woods,  invariably  in  the  darkest  night. 
Sometimes,  after  coming  home  thus  late  in  a  dark  and 
muggy  night,  when  my  feet  felt  the  path  which  my  eyes 
could  not  see,  dreaming  and  absent-minded  all  the  way, 
until  I  was  aroused  by  having  to  raise  my  hand  to  lift 
the  latch,  I  have  not  been  able  to  recall  a  single  step  of 
my  walk,  and  I  have  thought  that  perhaps  my  body 
would  find  its  way  home  if  its  master  should  forsake  it, 
as  the  hand  finds  its  way  to  the  mouth  without  assist 
ance.  Several  times,  when  a  visitor  chanced  to  stay  into 
evening,  and  it  proved  a  dark  night,  I  was  obliged  to 
conduct  him  to  the  cart-path  in  the  rear  of  the  house, 
and  then  point  out  to  him  the  direction  he  was  to  pur 
sue,  and  in  keeping  which  he  was  to  be  guided  rather 
by  his  feet  than  his  eyes.  One  very  dark  night  I  di 
rected  thus  on  their  way  two  young  men  who  had  been 
fishing  in  the  pond.  They  lived  about  a  mile  off  through 
the  woods,  and  were  quite  used  to  the  route.  A  day  or 
two  after  one  of  them  told  me  that  they  wandered 
about  the  greater  part  of  the  night,  close  by  their  own 


THE    VILLAGE.  185 

premises,  and  did  not  get  home  till  toward  morning,  by 
which  time,  as  there  had  been  several  heavy  showers  in 
the  mean  while,  and  the  leaves  were  very  wet,  they  were 
drenched  to  their  skins.  I  have  heard  of  many  going 
astray  even  in  the  village  streets,  when  the  darkness 
was  so  thick  that  you  could  cut  it  with  a  knife,  as  the 
saying  is.  Some  who  live  in  the  outskirts,  having  come 
to  town  a-shopping  in  their  wagons,  have  been  obliged 
to  put  up  for  the  night ;  and  gentlemen  and  ladies  making 
a  call  have  gone  half  a  mile  out  of  their  way,  feeling  the 
sidewalk  only  with  their  feet,  and  not  knowing  when 
they  turned.  It  is  a  surprising  and  memorable,  as  well 
as  valuable  experience,  to  be  lost  in  the  woods  any  time. 
Often  in  a  snow  storm,  even  by  day,  one  will  come 
out  upon  a  well-known  road  and  yet  find  it  impossible 
to  tell  which  way  leads  to  the  village.  Though  he 
knows  that  he  has  travelled  it  a  thousand  times,  he  can 
not  recognize  a  feature  in  it,  but  it  is  as  strange  to  him 
as  if  it  were  a  road  in  Siberia.  By  night,  of  course,  the 
perplexity  is  infinitely  greater.  In  our  most  trivial 
walks,  we  are  constantly,  though  unconsciously,  steering 
like  pilots  by  certain  well-known  beacons  and  head 
lands,  and  if  we  go  beyond  our  usual  course  we  still  car 
ry  in  our  minds  the  bearing  of  some  neighboring  cape ; 
and  not  till  we  are  completely  lost,  or  turned  round,  • — 
for  a  man  needs  only  to  be  turned  round  once  with  his 
eyes  shut  in  this  world  to  be  lost,  —  do  we  appreciate 
the  vastness  and  strangeness  of  Nature.  Every  man 
has  to  learn  the  points  of  compass  again  as  often  as 
he  awakes,  whether  from  sleep  or  any  abstraction.  Not 
till  we  are  lost,  in  other  words,  not  till  we  have  lost  the 
world,  do  we  begin  to  find  ourselves,  and  realize  where 
we  are  and  the  infinite  extent  of  our  relations. 


186  WALDEN. 

One  afternoon,  near  the  end  of  the  firs\,  summer 
when  I  went  to  the  village  to  get  a  shoe  from  the  cob 
bler's,  I  was  seized  and  put  into  jail,  because,  as  I  have 
elsewhere  related,  I  did  not  pay  a  tax  to,  or  recognize 
the  authority  of,  the  state  which  buys  and  sells  men, 
women,  and  children,  like  cattle  at  the  door  of  its  senate- 
house.  I  had  gone  down  to  the  woods  for  other  pur 
poses.  But,  wherever  a  man  goes,  men  will  pursue  and 
paw  him  with  their  dirty  institutions,  and,  if  they  can, 
constrain  him  to  belong  to  their  desperate  odd-fellow 
society.  It  is  true,  I  might  have  resisted  forcibly  with 
more  or  less  effect,  might  have  run  "  amok "  against 
society ;  but  I  preferred  that  society  should  run  "  amok  " 
against  me,  it  being  the  desperate  party.  However,  I  was 
released  the  next  day,  obtained  my  mended  shoe,  and 
returned  to  the  woods  in  season  to  get  my  dinner  of 
huckleberries  on  Fair-Haven  Hill.  I  was  never  mo 
lested  by  any  person  but  those  who  represented  the 
state.  I  had  no  lock  nor  bolt  but  for  the  desk  which 
held  my  papers,  not  even  a  nail  to  put  over  my  latch  or 
windows.  I  never  fastened  my  door  night  or  day, 
though  I  was  to  be  absent  several  days ;  not  even  when 
the  next  fall  I  spent  a  fortnight  in  the  woods  of  Maine. 
And  yet  my  house  was  more  respected  than  if  it  had 
been  surrounded  by  a  file  of  soldiers.  The  tired  ram 
bler  could  rest  and  warm  himself  by  my  fire,  the  liter 
ary  amuse  himself  with  the  few  books  on  my  table,  or 
the  curious,  by  opening  my  closet  door,  see  what  was 
left  of  my  dinner,  and  what  prospect  I  had  of  a  supper. 
Yet,  though  many  people  of  every  class  came  this  way 
to  the  pond,  I  suffered  no  serious  inconvenience  from 
these  sources,  and  I  naver  missed  any  thing  but  one 
email  book,  a  volume  of  Homer,  which  perhaps  was  im- 


THE    VILLAGE.  187 

properly  gilded,  and  this  I  trust  a  soldier  of  our  camp 
has  found  by  this  time.  I  am  convinced,  that  if  ah1  men 
were  to  live  as  simply  as  I  then  did,  thieving  and  robbery 
would  be  unknown.  These  take  place  only  in  communi 
ties  where  some  have  got  more  than  is  sufficient  while 
others  have  not  enough.  The  Pope's  Homers  would 
soon  get  properly  distributed.  — 

"  Nee  bella  fuerunt, 
Faginus  astabat  dum  scyphus  ante  dapes." 

"  Nor  wars  did  men  molest, 
When  only  beechen  bowls  were  in  request." 

"  You  who  govern  public  affairs,  what  need  have  you 
to  employ  punishments  ?  Love  virtue,  and  the  people 
will  be  virtuous.  The  virtues  of  a  superior  man  are 
like  the  wind ;  the  virtues  of  a  common  man  are  like 
the  grass;  the  grass,  when  the  wind  passes  ov$r  it, 
bends." 


THE   PONDS. 


SJMET:MES,  having  had  a  surfeit  of  human  society 
and  gossip,  and  worn  out  all  my  village  friends,  I  ram 
bled  still  farther  westward  than  I  habitually  dwell,  into 
yet  more  unfrequented  parts  of  the  town,  "  to  fresh 
woods  and  pastures  new,"  or,  while  the  sun  was  setting, 
made  my  supper  of  huckleberries  and  blueberries  on 
Fair  Haven  Hill,  and  laid  up  a  store  for  several  days. 
The  fruits  do  not  yield  their  true  flavor  to  the  purchaser 
of  them,  nor  to  him  who  raises  them  for  the  market. 
There  is  but  one  way  to  obtain  it,  yet  few  take  that 
way.  If  you  would  know  the  flavor  of  huckleberries, 
ask  the  cow-boy  or  the  partridge.  It  is  a  vulgar  error 
to  suppose  that  you  have  tasted  huckleberries  who  never 
plucked  them.  A  huckleberry  never  reaches  Boston  ; 
they  have  not  been  known  there  since  they  grew  on  her 
three  hills.  The  ambrosial  and  essential  part  of  the 
fruit  is  lost  with  the  bloom  which  is  rubbed  off  in  the 
market  cart,  and  they  become  mere  provender.  Aa 
long  as  Eternal  Justice  reigns,  not  one  innocent  huc 
kleberry  can  be  transported  thither  from  the  country's 
hills. 

(188) 


THE    PONDS.  189 

Occasionally,  after  my  hoeing  was  done  for  the  day.  I 
joined  some  impatient  companion  who  had  been  fish 
ing  on  the  pond  since  morning,  as  silent  and  motion 
less  as  a  duck  or  a  floating  leaf,  and,  after  practising 
various  kinds  of  philosophy,  had  concluded  commonly, 
by  the  time  I  arrived,  that  he  belonged  to  the  ancient 
sect  of  Crenobites.  There  was  one  older  man,  an  ex 
cellent  fisher  and  skilled  in  all  kinds  of  woodcraft, 
who  was  pleased  to  look  upon  my  house  as  a  building 
erected  for  the  convenience  of  fishermen ;  and  I  was 
equally  pleased  when  he  sat  in  my  doorway  to  arrange 
his  lines.  Once  in  a  while  we  sat  together  on  the  pond, 
he  at  one  end  of  the  boat,  and  I  at  the  other ;  but  not 
many  words  passed  between  us,  for  he  had  grown  deaf 
in  his  later  years,  but  he  occasionally  hummed  a  psalm, 
which  harmonized  well  enough  with  my  philosophy. 
Our  intercourse  was  thus  altogether  one  of  unbroken 
harmony,  far  more  pleasing  to  remember  than  if  it  had 
been-  carried  on  by  speech.  When,  as  was  commonly 
the  case,  I  had  none  to  commune  with,  I  used  to  raise 
the  echoes  by  striking  with  a  paddle  on  the  side  of  my 
boat,  filling  the  surrounding  woods  with  circling  and  di 
lating  sound,  stirring  them  up  as  the  keeper  of  a  mena 
gerie  his  wild  beasts,  until  I  elicited  a  growl  from  every 
wooded  vale  and  hillside. 

In  warm  evenings  I  frequently  sat  in  the  boat  play 
ing  the  flute,  and  saw  the  perch,  which  I  seemed  to 
have  charmed,  hovering  around  me,  and  the  moon  travel 
ling  over  the  ribbed  bottom,  which  was  strewed  with  the 
wrecks  of  the  forest.  Formerly  I  had  come  to  this 
pond  adventurously,  from  time  to  time,  in  dark  summer 
nights,  with  a  companion,  and  making  a  fire  close  to  the 
water's  e  Ige,  which  we  thought  attracted  the  fishes,  we 


190  WALDEN. 

caught  pouts  with  a  bunch  of  worms  strung  on  a  thread 
and  when  we  had  done,  far  in  the  night,  threw  the 
burning  brands  high  into  the  air  like  skyrockets,  which; 
coming  down  into  the  pond,  were  quenched  with  a  loud 
hissing,  and  we  were  suddenly  groping  in  total  dark 
ness.  Through  this,  whistling  a  tune,  we  took  our  way 
to  the  haunts  of  men  again.  But  now  I  had  made  my 
home  by  the  shore. 

Sometimes,  after  staying  in  a  village  parlor  till  the 
family  had  all  retired,  I  have  returned  to  the  woods,  and, 
partly  with  a  view  to  the  next  day's  dinner,  spent  the 
hours  of  midnight  fishing  from  a  boat  by  moonlight,  sere 
naded  by  owls  and  foxes,  and  hearing,  from  time  to  time, 
the  creaking  note  of  some  unknown  bird  close  at  hand. 
These  experiences  were  very  memorable  and  valuable 
to  me,  —  anchored  in  forty  feet  of  water,  and  twenty  or 
thirty  rods  from  the  shore,  surrounded  sometimes  by 
thousands  of  small  perch  and  shiners,  dimpling  the  sur 
face  with  their  tails  in  the  moonlight,  and  communicat 
ing  by  a  long  flaxen  line  with  mysterious  nocturnal 
fishes  which  had  their  dwelling  forty  feet  below,  or 
sometimes  dragging  sixty  feet  of  line  about  the  pond  as 
I  drifted  in  the  gentle  night  breeze,  now  and  then  feel 
ing  a  slight  vibration  along  it,  indicative  of  some  life 
prowling  about  its  extremity,  of  dull  uncertain  blunder 
ing  purpose  there,  and  slow  to  make  up  its  mind.  At 
length  you  slowly  raise,  pulling  hand  over  hand,  some 
horned  pout  squeaking  and  squirming  to  the  upper  air. 
It  was  very  queer,  especially  in  dark  nights,  when  your 
thoughts  had  wandered  to  vast  and  cosmogonal  themes 
in  other  spheres,  to  feel  this  faint  jerk,  which  came  to 
interrupt  your  dreams  and  link  you  to  Nature  again. 
It  seemed  as  if  I  might  next  cast  my  line  upward  into 


THE    PONDS.  191 

the  air,  as  well  as  downward  into  this  element  which 
was  scarcely  more  dense.  Thus  I  caught  two  fishes  as 
it  were  with  one  hook. 


The  scenery  of  Walden  is  on  a  humble  scale,  and, 
though  very  beautiful,  does  not  approach  to  grandeur, 
nor  can  it  much  concern  one  who  has  not  long  fre 
quented  it  or  lived  by  its  shore ;  yet  this  pond  is  so 
remarkable  for  its  depth  and  purity  as  to  merit  a  par 
ticular  description.  It  is  a  clear  and  deep  green  well, 
half  a  mile  long  and  a  mile  and  three  quarters  in  cir 
cumference,  and  contains  about  sixty-one  and  a  half 
acres  ;  a  perennial  spring  in  the  midst  of  pine  and  oak 
woods,  without  any  visible  inlet  or  outlet  except  by  the 
clouds  and  evaporation.  The  surrounding  hills  rise 
abruptly  from  the  water  to  the  height  of  forty  to  eighty 
feet,  though  on  the  south-east  and  east  •  they  attain  to 
about  one  hundred  and  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  re 
spectively,  within  a  quarter  and  a  third  of  a  mile. 
They  are  exclusively  woodland.  All  our  Concord  wa 
ters  have  two  colors  at  least,  one  when  viewed  at  a  dis 
tance,  and  another,  more  proper,  close  at  hand.  The 
first  depends  more  on  the  light,  and  follows  the  sky.  In 
clear  weather,  in  summer,  they  appear  blue  at  a  little 
distance,  especially  if  agitated,  and  at  a  great  distance 
all  appear  alike.  In  stormy  weather  they  are  some 
times  of  a  dark  slate  color.  The  sea,  however,  is  said 
to  be  blue  one  day  and  green  another  without  any  per 
ceptible  change  in  the  atmosphere.  I  have  seen  our 
river,  when,  the  landscape  being  covered  with  snow, 
both  water  and  ice  were  almost  as  green  as  grass. 
Some  consider  blue  "  to  be  the  color  of  pure  water, 


192  WALDEN. 

whether  liquid  or  solid."  But,  looking  directly  down 
into  our  waters  from  a  boat,  they  are  seen  to  be  of  very 
different  colors  Walden  is  blue  at  one  time  and  green 
at  another,  even  from  the  same  point  of  view.  Lying 
between  the  earth  and  the  heavens,  it  partakes  of  the 
color  of  both.  Viewed  from  a  hill-top  it  reflects  the 
color  of  the  sky,  but  near  at  hand  it  is  of  a  yellowish 
tint  next  the  shore  where  you  can  see  the  sand,  then  a 
light  green,  which  gradually  deepens  to  a  uniform  dark 
green  in  the  body  of  the  pond.  In  some  lights,  viewed 
even  from  a  hill-top,  it  is  of  a  vivid  green  next  the 
shore.  Some  have  referred  this  to  the  reflection  of  the 
verdure ;  but  it  is  equally  green  there  against  the  rail 
road  sand-bank,  and  in  the  spring,  before  the  leaves  are 
expanded,  and  it  may  be  simply  the  result  of  the  prevail 
ing  blue  mixed  with  the  yellow  of  the  sand.  Such  is  the 
color  of  its  iris.  This  is  that  portion,  also,  where  in  the 
spring,  the  ice  being  warmed  by  the  heat  of  the  sun 
reflected  from  the  bottom,  and  also  transmitted  through 
the  earth,  melts  first  and  forms  a  narrow  canal  about 
the  still  frozen  middle.  Like  the  rest  of  our  waters, 
when  much  agitated,  in  clear  weather,  so  that  the  sur 
face  of  the  waves  may  reflect  the  sky  at  the  right  angle, 
or  because  there  is  more  light  mixed  with  it,  it  appears 
at  a  little  distance  of  a  darker  blue  than  the  sky  itself; 
and  at  such  a  time,  being  on  its  surface,  and  looking 
with  divided  vision,  so  as  to  see  the  reflection,  I  have 
discerned  a  matchless  and  indescribable  light  blue, 
such  as  watered  or  changeable  silks  and  sword  blades 
suggest,  more  cerulean  than  the  sky  itself,  alternating 
with  the  original  dark  green  on  the  opposite  sides  of  the 
waves,  which  last  appeared  but  muddy  in  comparison 
It  is  a  vitreous  greenish  blue,  as  I  remember  it,  like 


THE    i»ONDS.  193 

those  patches  of  the  winter  sky  seen  through  cloud  vis 
tas  in  the  west  before  sundown.  Yet  a  single  glass  of' 
its  water  held  up  to  the  light  is  as  colorless  as  an  equal 
quantity  of  air.  It  is  well  known  that  a  large  plate  of 
glass  Mrill  have  a  green  tint,  owing,  as  the  makers  say, 
to  its  "  body,"  but  a  small  piece  of  the  same  will  be  col 
orless.  How  large  a  body  of  Walden  water  would  be 
lequired  to  reflect  a  green  tint  I  have  never  proved. 
The  water  of  our  river  is  black  or  a  very  dark  brown  to 
one  looking  directly  down  on  it,  and,  like  that  of  most 
ponds,  imparts  to  the  body  of  one  bathing  in  it  a  yellow 
ish  tinge  ;  but  this  water  is  of  such  crystalline  purity  that 
the  body  of  the  bather  appears  of  an  alabaster  white 
ness,  still  more  unnatural,  which,  as  the  limbs  are  mag 
nified  and  distorted  withal,  produces  a  monstrous  effect, 
making  fit  studies  for  a  Michael  Angelo. 

The  water  is  so  transparent  that  the  bottom  can  easi 
ly  be  discerned  at  the  depth  of  twenty-five  or  thirty  feet. 
Paddling  over  it,  you  may  see  many  feet  beneath  the 
surface  the  schools  of  perch  and  shiners,  perhaps  only 
an  inch  long,  yet  the  former  easily  distinguished  by  their 
transverse  bars,  and  you  think  that  they  must  be  ascetic 
fish  that  find  a  subsistence  there.  Once,  in  the  winter, 
many  years  ago,  when  I  had  been  cutting  holes  through 
the  ice  in  order  to  catch  pickerel,  as  I  stepped  ashore  I 
tossed  my  axe  back  on  to  the  ice,  but,  as  if  some  evil 
genius  had  directed  it,  it  slid  four  or  five  rods  directly 
into  one  of  the  -holes,  where  the  water  was  twenty -five 
feet  deep.  Out  of  curiosity,  I  lay  down  on  the  ice  and 
looked  through  the  hole,  until  I  saw  the  axe  a  little  on 
one  side,  standing  on  its  head,  with  its  helve  erect  and 
gently  swaying  to  and  fro  with  the  pulse  of  the  pond ; 
and  there  it  might  have  stood  erect  and  swaying  till  in 
13 


194 


WALDEW. 


the  coursn  of  time  the  handle  rotted  off,  if  I  had  not  dis 
turbed  it.  Making  another  hole  directly  over  it  with 
an  ice  chisel  which  I  had,  and  cutting  down  the  longest 
birch  which  I  could  find  in  the  neighborhood  with  my 
knift :,  I  made  a  slip-noose,  which  I  attached  to  its  end, 
and,  letting  it  down  carefully,  passed  it  over  the  knob  of 
the  handle,  and  drew  it  by  a  line  along  the  birch,  and 
so  puUed  the  axe  out  again. 

The  shore  is  composed  of  a  belt  of  smooth  rounded 
white  stones  like  paving  stones,  excepting  one  or  two 
short  sand  beaches,  and  is  so  steep  that  in  many  places 
a  single  leap  will  carry  you  into  water  over  your  head ; 
and  were  it  not  for  its  remarkable  transparency,  that 
would  be  the  last  to  be  seen  of  its  bottom  till  it  rose  on 
the  opposite  side.  Some  think  it  is  bottomless.  It  is 
nowhere  muddy,  and  a  casual  observer  would  say  that 
there  were  no  weeds  at  all  in  it ;  and  of  noticeable  plants, 
except  in  the  little  meadows  recently  overflowed,  which 
do  not  properly  belong  to  it,  a  closer  scrutiny  does  not 
detect  a  flag  nor  a  bulrush,  nor  even  a  lily,  yellow  or 
white,  but  only  a  few  small  heart-leaves  and  potamoge- 
tons,  and  perhaps  a  water-target  or  two ;  all  which  how 
ever  a  bather  might  not  perceive  ;  and  these  plants  are 
clean  and  bright  like  the  element  they  grow  in.  The 
stones  extend  a  rod  or  two  into  the  water,  and  then  the 
bottom  is  pure  sand,  except  in  the  deepest  parts,  where 
there  is  usually  a  little  sediment,  probably  from  the  de 
cay  of  the  leaves  which  have  been  wafted  on  to  it  so 
Jnany  successive  falls,  and  a  bright  green  weed  is  brought 
up  on  anchors  even  in  midwinter. 

We  have  one  other  pond  just  like  this,  White  Pond 
in  Nine  Acre  Corner,  about  two  and  a  half  miles  wes 
terly;  but,  though  I  am  acquainted  with  most  of  the 


THE   PON1.S.  195 

ponds  within  a  dozen  miles  of  this  centre,  I  do  not  know 
a  third  of  this  pure  and  well-like  character.  Successive 
nations  perchance  have  drank  at,  admired,  and  fathomed 
it,  and  passed  away,  and  still  its  water  is  green  and  pel 
lucid  as  ever.  Not  an  intermitting  spring!  Perhaps 
on  that  spring  morning  when  Adam  and  Eve  were 
driven  out  of  Eden  Walden  Pond  was  already  in  exist 
ence,  and  even  then  breaking  up  in  a  gentle  spring  rain 
accompanied  with  mist  and  a  southerly  wind,  and  cov 
ered  with  myriads  of  ducks  and  geese,  which  had  not 
heard  of  the  fall,  when  still  such  pure  lakes  sufficed 
them.  Even  then  it  had  commenced  to  rise  and  fall, 
and  had  clarified  its  waters  and  colored  them  of  the  hue 
they  now  wear,  and  obtained  a  patent  of  heaven  to  be 
the  only  Walden  Pond  in  the  world  and  distiller  of  ce 
lestial  dews.  Who  knows  in  how  many  unremembered 
nations'  literatures  this  has  been  the  Castalian  Fountain? 
or  what  nymphs  presided  over  it  in  the  Golden  Age  ? 
It  is  a  gem  of  the  first  water  which  Concord  wears  in 
her  coronet. 

Yet  perchance  the  first  who  came  to  this  well  have 
left  some  trace  of  their  footsteps.  I  have  been  surprised 
to  detect  encircling  the  pond,  even  where  a  thick  wood 
lias  just  been  cut  down  on  the  shore,  a  narrow  shelf-like 
path  in  the  steep  hill-side,  alternately  rising  and  falling, 
approaching  and  receding  from  the  water's  edge,  as  old 
probably  as  the  race  of  man  here,  worn  by  the  feet  of 
aboriginal  hunters,  and  still  from  time  to  time  unwit 
tingly  trodden  by  the  present  occupants  of  the  land. 
This  is  particularly  distinct  to  one  standing  on  the  mid 
dle  of  the  pond  in  winter,  just  after  a  light  snow  has 
fallen,  appearing  as  a  clear  undulating  white  line,  unob- 
scured  by  weeds  and  twigs,  and  very  obvious  a  quarter 


196  -WALDEN. 

of  a  mile  off  in  many  places  where  in  summer  it  is  hard 
ly  distinguishable  close  at  hand.  The  snow  reprints  it, 
as  it  were,  in  clear  white  type  alto-relievo.  The  orna 
mented  grounds  of  villas  which  will  one  day  be  built 
here  may  still  preserve  some  trace  of  this. 

The  pond  rises  and  falls,  but  whether  regularly  or 
not,  arid  within  what  period,  nobody  knows,  though,  as 
usual,  many  pretend  to  know.  It  is  commonly  higher 
in  the  winter  and  lower  in  the  summer,  though  not  cor 
responding  to  the  general  wet  and  dryness.  I  can  re 
member  when  it  was  a  foot  or  two  lower,  and  also  when 
it  was  at  least  five  feet  higher,  than  when  I  lived  by  it. 
There  is  a  narrow  sand-bar  running  into  it,  with  very 
deep  water  on  one  side,  on  which  I  helped  boil  a  kettle 
of  chowder,  some  six  rods  from  the  main  shore,  about 
the  year  1824,  which  it  has  not  been  possible  to  do  for 
twenty-five  years ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  my  friends 
used  to  listen  with  incredulity  when  I  told  them,  that  a 
few  years  later  I  was  accustomed  to  fish  from  a  boat  in 
a  secluded  cove  in  the  woods,  fifteen  rods  from  the  only 
shore  they  knew,  which  place  was  long  since  converted 
into  a  meadow.  But  the  pond  has  risen  steadily  for 
two  years,  and  now,  in  the  summer  of  '52,  is  just  five 
feet  higher  than  when  I  lived  there,  or  as  high  as  it  was 
thirty  years  ago,  and  fishing  goes  on  again  in  the  mead 
ow.  This  makes  a  difference  of  level,  at  the  outside, 
of  six  or  seven  feet ;  and  yet  the  water  shed  by  the  sur 
rounding  hills  is  insignificant  in  amount,  and  this  over 
flow  must  be  referred  to  causes  which  affect  the  deep 
springs.  This  same  summer  the  pond  has  begun  to  fall 
again.  It  is  remarkable  that  this  fluctuation,  whether 
periodical  or  not,  appears  thus  to  require  many  years 
for  its  a  ^complishment.  I  have  observed  one  rise  an  J  a 


THE    PONDS.  197 

part  of  two  falls,  and  I  expect  that  a  dozen  or  fifteen 
years  hence  the  water  will  again  be  as  low  as  I  have 
ever  known  it.  Flints'  Pond,  a  mile  eastward,  allowing 
for  the  disturbance  occasioned  by  its  inlets  and  outlets, 
and  the  smaller  intermediate  ponds  also,  sympathize 
with  Walden,  and  recently  attained  their  greatest  height 
at  the  same  time  with  the  latter.  The  same  is  true,  as 
far  as  my  observation  goes,  of  White  Pond. 

This  rise  and  fall  of  Walden  at  long  intervals  serves 
this  use  at  least ;  the  water  standing  at  this  great  height 
for  a  year  or  more,  though  it  makes  it  difficult  to  walk 
round  it,  kills  the  shrubs  and  trees  which  have  sprung 
up  about  its  edge  since  the  last  rise,  pitch-pines,  birches, 
ulders,  aspens,  and  others,  and,  falling  again,  leaves  an 
unobstructed  shore ;  for,  unlike  many  ponds  and  all  wa 
ters  which  are  subject  to  a  daily  tide,  its  shore  is  clean 
est  when  the  water  is  lowest.  On  the  side  of  the  pond 
next  my  house,  a  row  of  pitch  pines  fifteen  feet  high  has 
been  killed  and  tipped  over  as  if  by  a  lever,  and  thus  a 
stop  put  to  their  encroachments ;  and  their  size  indicates 
how  many  years  have  elapsed  since  the  last  rise  to  this 
height.  By  this  fluctuation  the  pond  asserts  its  title  to 
a  shore,  and  thus  the  shore  is  shorn,  and  the  trees  can 
not  hold  it  by  right  of  possession.  These  are  the  lips 
of  the  lake  on  which  no  beard  grows.  It  licks  its  chaps 
from  time  to  time.  When  the  water  is  at  its  height,  the 
alders,  willows,  and  maples  send  forth  a  mass  of  fibrous 
red  roots  several  feet  long  from  all  sides  of  their  stems 
in  the  water,  and  to  the  height  of  three  or  four  feet 
from  the  ground,  in  the  effort  to  maintain  themselves ; 
and  I  have  known  the  high-blueberry  bushes  about  the 
shore,  which  commonly  produce  no  frnit,  bear  an  abun« 
dant  crop  under  these  circumstances. 


198  WALDEN. 

Some  have  been  puzzled  to  tell  how  the  shore  be 
came  so  regularly  paved.  My  townsmen  have  all  heard 
the  tradition,  the  oldest  people  tell  me  that  they  heard 
it  in  their  youth,  that  anciently  the  Indians  were  hold 
ing  a  po\v-wow  upon  a  hill  here,  which  rose  as  high  into 
the  heavens  as  the  pond  now  sinks  deep  into  the  earth, 
and  they  used  much  profanity,  as  the  story  goes,  though 
this  vice  is  one  of  which  the  Indians  were  never  guilty, 
and  while  they  were  thus  engaged  the  hill  shook  and 
suddenly  sank,  and  only  one  old  squaw,  named  Walden, 
escaped,  and  from  her  the  pond  was  named.  It  has 
been  conjectured  that  when  the  hill  shook  these  stones 
rolled  down  its  side  and  became  the  present  shore.  It 
is  very  certain,  at  any  rate,  that  once  there  was  no  pond 
here,  and  now  there  is  one ;  and  this  Indian  fable  does 
not  in  any  respect  conflict  with  the  account  of  that  an 
cient  settler  whom  I  have  mentioned,  who  remembers 
so  well  when  he  first  came  here  with  his  divining  rod, 
saw  a  thin  vapor  rising  from  the  sward,  and  the  hazel 
pointed  steadily  downward,  and  he  concluded  to  dig  a 
well  here.  As  for  the  stones,  many  still  think  that  they 
are  hardly  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  action  of  the 
waves  on  these  hills ;  but  I  observe  that  the  surround 
ing  hills  are  remarkably  full  of  the  same  kind  of  stones, 
so  that  they  have  been  obliged  to  pile  them  up  in  walls 
on  both  sides  of  the  railroad  cut  nearest  the  pond ;  and 
moreover,  there  are  most  stones  where  the  shore  is  most 
abrupt ;  so  that,  unfortunately,  it  is  no  longer  a  mystery 
to  me.  I  detect  the  paver.  If  the  name  was  not  de 
rived  from  that  of  some  English  locality,  —  Saffron  Wal 
den,  for  instance, — one  might  suppose  that  H  was  called, 
originally,  Walkd-in  Pond. 

The  pond  was  my  well  ready  dug.     For  four  months 


THE    PONDS.  1 

in  the  year  its  w  iter  is  as  cold  as  it  is  pure  at  all  times  ; 
and  I  think  that  it  is  then  as  good  as  any,  if  not  the 
best,  in  the  town.  In  the  winter,  all  water  which  is 
exposed  to  the  air  is  colder  than  springs  and  wells 
which  are  protected  from  it.  The  temperature  of  the 
pond  water  which  had  stood  in  the  room  where  I  sat 
from  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  till  noon  the  next,  day, 
the  sixth  of  March,  1846,  the  thermometer  having  been 
up  to  65°  or  70°  some  of  the  time,  owing  partly  to  the 
sun  on  the  roof,  was  42°,  or  one  degree  colder  than 
the  water  of  one  of  the  coldest  wells  in  the  village  just 
drawn.  The  temperature  of  the  Boiling  Spring  the 
same  day  was  45°,  or  the  warmest  of  any  water  tried, 
though  it  is  the  coldest  that  I  know  of  in  summer,  when, 
beside,  shallow  and  stagnant  surface  water  is  not  min 
gled  with  it.  Moreover,  in  summer,  Walden  never  be 
comes  so  warm  as  most  water  which  is  exposed  to  the 
sun,  on  account  of  its  depth.  In  the  warmest  weather 
I  usually  placed  a  pailful  in  my  cellar,  where  it  became 
cool  in  the  night,  and  remained  so  during  the  day; 
though  I  also  resorted  to  a  spring  in  the  neighborhood. 
It  was  as  good  when  a  week  old  as  the  day  it  was 
dipped,  and  had  no  taste  of  the  pump.  Whoever  camps 
for  a  week  in  summer  by  the  shore  of  a  pond,  needs 
only  bury  a  pail  of  water  a  few  feet  deep  in  the  shade 
of  his  camp  to  be  independent  on  the  luxury  of  ice. 

There  have  been  caught  in  Walden,  pickerel,  one 
weighing  seven  pounds,  to  say  nothing  of  another  which 
carried  off  a  reel  with  great  velocity,  which  the  fisher 
man  safely  set  down  at  eight  pounds  because  he  did  not 
»ee  him,  perch  and  pouts,  some  of  each  weighing  over 
two  pounds,  shiners,  chivins  or  roach,  (Leuciscus pulchel- 
lits,}  a  \  ery  few  breams,  and  a  couple  of  eels,  one  weigh- 


200  WALDEN. 

ing  four  pounds,  —  I  am  thus  particular  because  iLe 
weight  of  a  fish  is  commonly  its  only  title  to  fame,  and 
these  are  the  only  eels  I  have  heard  of  here ;  —  also,  I 
have  a  faint  recollection  of  a  little  fish  some  five  inches 
long,  with  silvery  sides  and  a  greenish  back,  somewhat 
dace-like  in  its  character,  which  I  mention  here  chiefly 
to  link  my  facts  to  fable.  Nevertheless,  this  pond  is 
not  very  fertile  in  fish.  Its  pickerel,  though  not  abun 
dant,  are  its  chief  boast.  I  have  seen  at  one  time  lying 
on  the  ice  pickerel  of  at  least  three  different  kinds ;  a 
long  and  shallow  one,  steel-colored,  most  like  those 
caught  in  the  river ;  a  bright  golden  kind,  with  green 
ish  reflections  and  remarkably  deep,  which  is  the  most 
common  here ;  and  another,  golden-colored,  and  shaped 
like  the  last,  but  peppered  on  the  sides  with  small  dark 
brown  or  black  spots,  intermixed  with  a  few  faint  blood- 
red  ones,  very  much  like  a  trout.  The  specific  name 
reticulatus  would  not  apply  to  this  ;  it  should  be  gutta- 
tus  rather.  These  are  all  very  firm  fish,  and  weigh 
more  than  their  size  promises.  The  shiners,  pouts,  and 
perch  also,  and  indeed  all  the  fishes  which  inhabit  this 
pond,  are  much  cleaner,  handsomer,  and  firmer  fleshed 
than  those  in  the  river  and  most  other  ponds,  as  the 
water  is  purer,  and  they  can  easily  be  distinguished 
from  them.  Probably  many  ichthyologists  would  make 
new  varieties  of  some  of  them.  There  are  also  a  clean 
race  of  frogs  and  tortoises,  and  a  few  muscles  in  it ; 
muskrats  and  minks  leave  their  traces  about  it,  and  oc 
casionally  a  travelling  mud-turtle  visits  it.  Sometimes, 
when  I  pushed  off  my  boat  in  the  morning,  I  disturbed  a 
great  mud-turtle  which  had  secreted  himself  under  the 
boat  iiv  the  night.  Ducks  and  geese  frequent  it  in  the 
spring  and  fall,  the  white-bellied  swallows  (Hhundo 


THE    PONDS.  201 

oicdor)  akim  over  it,  and  the  peetweets  (Totanus  macu- 
larius)  "  teter "  along  its  stony  shores  all  summer.  I 
have  sometimes  disturbed  a  fishhawk  sitting  on  a  white- 
pine  over  the  water ;  but  I  doubt  if  it  is  ever  profaned 
by  the  wing  of  a  gull,  like  Fair  Haven.  At  most,  it 
tolerates  one  annual  loon.  These  are  all  the  animals 
of  consequence  which  frequent  it  now. 

You  may  see  from  a  boat,  in  calm  weather,  near  the 
sandy  eastern  shc^,,  where  the  water  is  eight  or  ten 
feet  deep,  and  also  in  some  other  parts  of  the  pond, 
some  circular  heaps  half  a  dozen  feet  in  diameter  by 
a  foot  in  height,  consisting  of  small  stones  less  than  a 
hen's  egg  in  size,  where  all  around  is  bare  sand.  At 
first  you  wonder  if  the  Indians  could  have  formed  them 
on  the  ice  for  any  purpose,  and  so,  when  the  ice  melted, 
they  sank  to  the  bottom  ;  but  they  are  too  regular  and 
some  of  them  plainly  too  fresh  for  that.  They  are 
similar  to  those  found  in  rivers;  but  as  there  are  no 
suckers  nor  lampreys  here,  I  know  not  by  what  fish 
they  could  be  made.  Perhaps  they  are  the  nests  of  the 
chivin.  These  lend  a  pleasing  mystery  to  the  bottom. 

The  shore  is  irregular  enough  not  to  be  monotonous. 
I  have  in  my  mind's  eye  the  western  indented  with 
deep  bays,  the  bolder  northern,  and  the  beautifully 
scolloped  southern  shore,  where  successive  capes  over 
lap  each  other  and  suggest  unexplored  coves  between. 
The  forest  has  never  so  good  a  setting,  nor  is  so  dis 
tinctly  beautiful,  as  when  seen  from  the  middle  of  a 
small  lake  amid  hills  which  rise  from  the  water's  edge  : 
for  the  water  in  which  it  is  reflected  not  only  makes  the 
best  foreground  in  such  a  case,  but,  with  its  winding 
shore,  the  most  natural  and  agreeable  boundary  to  it. 
There  is  no  rawness  nor  imperfection  in  its  edge  there. 


V02  WALDEN. 

as  where  the  axe  has  cleared  a  part,  or  a  cultivated 
field  abuts  on  it.  The  trees  have  ample  room  to  ex 
pand  on  the  water  side,  and  each  sends  forth  it  5  most 
vigorous  branch  in  that  direction.  There  Nature  has 
woven  a  natural  selvage,  and  the  eye  rises  by  just 
gradations  from  the  low  shrubs  of  the  shore  to  the 
highest  trees.  There  are  few  traces  of  man's  hand  tc 
be  seen.  The  water  laves  the  shore  as  it  did  a  thou 
sand  years  ago. 

A  lake  is  the  landscape's  most  beautiful  and  expres 
sive  feature.  It  is  earth's  eye ;  looking  into  which  the 
beholder  measui  *,s  the  depth  of  his  own  nature.  The 
fluviatile  trees  next  the  shore  are  the  slender  eyelashes 
which  fringe  it,  and  the  wooded  hills  and  cliffs  around 
are  its  overhanging  brows. 

Standing  on  the  smooth  sandy  beach  at  the  east  end 
of  the  pond,  in  a  calm  September  afternoon,  when  a 
slight  haze  makes  the  opposite  shore  line  indistinct,  I 
hav*  seen  whence  came  the  expression,  "  the  glassy 
surface  of  a  lake."  When  you  invert  your  head,  it 
looks  like  a  thread  of  finest  gossamer  stretched  across 
the  valley,  and  gleaming  against  the  distant  pine  woods, 
separating  one  stratum  of  the  atmosphere  from  another. 
You  would  think  that  you  could  walk  dry  under  it  to 
the  opposite  hills,  and  that  the  swallows  which  skirn 
over  might  perch  on  it.  Indeed,  they  sometimes  dive 
below  the  line,  as  it  were  by  mistake,  and  are  unde 
ceived.  As  you  look  over  the  pond  westward  you  are 
obliged  to  employ  both  your  hands  to  defend  your  eyes 
against  the  reflected  as  well  as  the  true  sun,  for  they  are 
equally  bright ;  and  if,  between  the  two,  you  survey  its 
surface  critically,  i\  is  literally  as  smooth  as  glass,  ex 
cept  where  the  skater  insects,  at  equal  intervals  scat- 


THE   PONDS.  203 

fored  over  its  whole  extent,  by  their  motions  in  the 
sun  produce  the  finest  imaginable  qwkle  on  it,  or,  per 
chance,  a  duck  plumes  itself,  or,  a3  I  nave  said,  a  swal 
low  skims  so  low  as  to  touch  it.  }  i  iaay  be  that  in  the 
distance  a  fish  describes  an  arc  of  tuiee  or  four  feet  in 
the  air,  and  there  is  one  bright  flash  wuere  it  emerges, 
and  another  where  it  strikes  the  water ;  sometimes  the 
whole  silvery  arc  is  revealed ;  or  here  and  there,  per 
haps,  is  a  thistle-down  floating  on  its  surface,  which  the 
fishes  dart  at  and  so  dimple  it  again.  It  is  like  molten 
glass  cooled  but  not  congealed,  and  the  few  motes  in  it 
are  pure  and  beautiful  like  the  imperfections*  in  glass. 
You  may  often  detect  a  yet  smoother  and  darker  water, 
separated  from  the  rest  as  if  by  an  invisible  cobweb, 
boom  of  the  water  nymphs,  resting  on  it.  From  a  hill 
top  you  'can  see  a  fish  leap  in  almost  any  part ;  for  not 
a  pickerel  or  shiner  picks  an  insect  from  this  smooiu 
surface  but  it  manifestly  disturbs  the  equilibrium  of  the 
whole  lake.  It  is  wonderful  with  what  elaborateness 
this  simple  fact  is  advertised,  —  this  piscine  murder 
will  out,  —  and  from  my  distant  perch  I  distinguish  the 
circling  undulations  when  they  are  half  a  dozen  rods  in 
diameter.  You  can  even  detect  a  water-bug  (  Gyrinus) 
ceaselessly  progressing  over  the  smooth  surface  a  quar 
ter  of  a  mile  off;  for  they  furrow  the  water  slightly, 
making  a  conspicuous  ripple  bounded  by  two  diverging 
lines,  but  the  skaters  glide  over  it  without  rippling  it 
perceptibly.  When  the  surface  is  considerably  agitated 
there  are  no  skaters  nor  water-bugs  on  it,  but  apparent 
ly,  in  calm  days,  they  leave  their  havens  and  adventu 
rously  glide  forth  from  the  shore  by  short  impulses  till 
they  completely  cover  it.  It  is  a  soothing  employment, 
on  one  of  those  fine  days  in  the  fall  wben  all  the  warmth 


204  WALDEN. 

of  the  sun  is  fully  appreciated,  to  sit  on  a  stump  on  sue  b 
a  height  as  this,  overlooking  the  pond,  and  study  the 
dimpling  circles  which  are  incessantly  inscribed  on  its 
otherwise  invisible  surface  amid  the  reflected  skies,  and 
trees.  Over  this  great  expanse  there  is  no  disturbance 
but  it  is  thus  at  once  gently  smoothed  away  and  as 
suaged,  as,  when  a  vase  of  water  is  jarred,  the  trembling 
circles  seek  the  shore  and  all  is  smooth  again.  Not  a 
fish  can  leap  or  an  insect  fall  on  the  pond  but  it  is  thus 
reported  in  circling  dimples,  in  lines  of  beauty,  as  it 
were  the  constant  welling  up  of  its  fountain,  the  gentle 
pulsing  of  ^ts  life,  the  heaving  of  its  breast.  The  thrills 
of  joy  and  thrills  of  pain  are  undistinguishable.  How 
peaceful  the  phenomena  of  the  lake  !  Again  the  works 
of  man  shine  as  in  the  spring.  Ay,  every  leaf  and 
twig  and  stone  and  cobweb  sparkles  now  at  mid-after 
noon  as  when  covered  with  dew  in  a  spring  morning. 
Every  motion  of  an  oar  or  an  insect  produces  a  flash  of 
light ;  and  if  an  oar  falls,  how  sweet  the  echo ! 

In  such  a  day,  in  September  or  October,  Walden  is  a 
perfect  forest  mirror,  set  round  with  stones  as  precious 
to  my  eye  as  if  fewer  or  rarer.  Nothing  so  fair,  so 
pure,  and  at  the  same  time  so  large,  as  a  lake,  perchance, 
lies  on  the  surface  of  the  earth.  Sky  water.  It  needs 
no  fence.  Nations  come  and  go  without  defiling  it.  It 
is  a  mirror  which  no  stone  can  crack,  whose  quicksilver 
will  never  wear  off,  whose  gilding  Nature  continually 
repairs;  no  storms,  no  dust,  can  dim  its  surface  ever 
fresh  ;  —  a  mirror  in  which  all  impurity  presented  to  it 
sinks,  swept  and  dusted  by  the  sun's  hazy  brush,  —  this 
the  light  dust-cloth,  —  which  retains  no  breath  that  is 
breathed  on  it,  but  sends  its  own  to  float  as  clouds  high 
above  its  surface,  and  be  reflected  in  its  bosom  still. 


THE    PONDS.  205 

A  field  of  water  betrays  the  spirit  that  is  in  the  air. 
It  is  continually  receiving  new  life  and  motion  from 
above.  It  is  intermediate  in  its  nature  between  land 
and  sky.  On  land  only  the  grass  and  trees  wave,  but 
the  water  itself  is  rippled  by  the  wind.  I  see  where  the 
breeze  dashes  across  it  by  the  streaks  or  flakes  of  light. 
It  is  remarkable  that  we  can  look  down  on  its  surface. 
We  shall,  perhaps,  look  down  thus  on  the  surface  of  air 
at  length,  and  mark  where  a  still  subtler  spirit  sweeps 
over  it. 

The  skaters  and  water-bugs  finally  disappear  in  the 
latter  part  of  October,  when  the  severe  frosts  have 
come;  and  then  and  in  November,  usually,  in  a  calm 
day,  there  is  absolutely  nothing  to  ripple  the  surface. 
One  November  afternoon,  in  the  calm  at  the  end  of  a 
rain  storm  of  several  days'  duration,  when  the  sky  was 
still  completely  overcast  and  the  air  was  full  of  mist,  I 
observed  that  the  pond  was  remarkably  smooth,  so  that 
it  was  difficult  to  distinguish  its  surface ;  though  it  no 
longer  reflected  the  bright  tints  of  October,  but  the  som 
bre  November  colors  of  the  surrounding  hills.  Though 
1  passed  over  it  as  gently  as  possible,  the  slight  undula 
tions  produced  by  my  boat  extended  almost  as  far  as  I 
could  see,  and  gave  a  ribbed  appearance  to  the  reflec 
tions.  But,  as  I  was  looking  over  the  surface,  I  saw 
here  and  there  at  a  distance  a  faint  glimmer,  as  if  some 
skater  insects  which  had  escaped  the  frosts  might  be 
collected  there,  or,  perchance,  the  surface,  being  so 
smooth,  betrayed  where  a  spring  welled  up  from  the 
bottom.  Paddling  gently  to  one  of  these  places,  I  was 
surprised  to  find  myself  surrounded  by  myriads  of  small 
perch,  about  five  inches  long,  of  a  rich  bronze  color  in 
the  green  water,  sporting  there  au;l  constantly  rising  to 


206  WALUEN. 

the  surface  and  dimpling  it,  sometimes  leaving  bubbles 
on  it.  In  such  transparent  and  seemingly  bottomless 
water,  reflecting  the  clouds,  I  seemed  to  be  floating 
through  the  air  as  in  a  balloon,  and  their  swimming 
impressed  me  as  a  kind  of  flight  or  hovering,  as  if  they 
were  a  compact  flock  of  birds  passing  just  beneath  my 
level  on  the  right  or  left,  their  fins,  lik«.  sails,  set  all 
around  them.  There  were  many  such  schools  in  the 
pond,  apparently  improving  the  short  season  before  win 
ter  would  draw  an  icy  shutter  over  their  broad  sky 
light,  sometimes  giving  to  the  surface  an  appearance  as 
if  a  slight  breeze  struck  it,  or  a  few  rain-drops  fell  there. 
When  I  approached  carelessly  and  alarmed  them,  they 
made  a  sudden  plash  and  rippling  with  their  tails,  as  if 
one  had  struck  the  water  with  a  brushy  bough,  and  in 
stantly  took  refuge  in  the  depths.  At  length  the  wind 
rose,  the  mist  increased,  and  the  waves  began  to  run, 
and  the  perch  leaped  much  higher  than  before,  half  out 
of  water,  a  hundred  black  points,  three  inches  long,  at 
once  above  the  surface.  Even  as  late  as  the  fifth  of 
December,  one  year,  I  saw  some  dimples  on  the  surface, 
and  thinking  it  was  going  to  rain  hard  immediately,  the 
air  being  full  of  mist,  I  made  haste  to  take  my  place  at 
the  oars  and  row  homeward ;  already  the  rain  seemed 
rapidly  increasing,  though  I  felt  none  on  my  cheek,  and 
I  anticipated  a  thorough  soaking.  But  suddenly  the 
dimples  ceased,  for  they  were  produced  by  the  perch, 
which  the  noise  of  my  oars  had  scared  into  the  depths, 
and  I  saw  their  schools  dimly  disappearing ;  so  I  spent 
a  dry  afternoon  after  all. 

An  old  man  who  used  to  frequent  this  pond  nearly 
sixty  years  ago,  when  it  was  dark  with  surrounding  for 
ests,  tells  me  that  in  those  days  he  sometimes  saw  it  all 


THE    PONDS.  207 

alive  with  ducks  and  other  water  fowl,  and  that  there 
were  many  eagles  about  it.  He  came  here  a-fishing, 
and  used  an  old  log  canoe  which  he  found  on  the  shore. 
It  was  made  of  two  white-pine  logs  dug  out  and  pinned 
together,  and  was  cut  off  square  at  the  ends.  It  was 
very  clumsy,  but  lasted  a  great  many  years  before  it 
became  water-logged  and  perhaps  sank  to  the  bottom. 
lie  did  not  know  whose  it  was ;  it  belonged  to  the  pond. 
He  used  to  make  a  cable  for  his  anchor  of  strips  of  hick 
ory  bark  tied  together.  An  old  man,  a  potter,  who  lived 
by  the  pond  before  the  Revolution,  told  him  once  that 
there  was  an  iron  chest  at  the  bottom,  and  that  he  had 
seen  it.  Sometimes  it  would  come  floating  up  to  the 
shore ;  but  when  you  went  toward  it,  it  would  go  back 
into  deep  water  and  disappear.  I  was  pleased  to  hear 
of  the  old  log  canoe,  which  took  the  place  of  an  Indiau 
one  of  the  same  material  but  more  graceful  construction, 
which  perchance  had  first  been  a  tree  on  the  bank,  and 
then,  as  it  were,  fell  into  the  water,  to  float  there  for  a 
generation,  the  most  proper  vessel  for  the  lake.  I  re 
member  that  when  I  first  looked  into  these  depths  there 
were  many  large  trunks  to  be  seen  indistinctly  lying  on 
the  bottom,  which  had  either  been  blown  over  formerly, 
or  left  on  the  ice  at  the  last  cutting,  when  wood  was 
cheaper ;  but  now  they  have  mostly  disappeared. 

When  I  first  paddled  a  boat  on  "VValden,  it  was  com 
pletely  surrounded  by  thick  and  lofty  pine  and  oak 
woods,  and  in  some  of  its  coves  grape  vines  had  run 
over  the  trees  next  the  water  and  formed  bowers  under 
which  a  boat  could  pass.  The  hills  which  form  its 
shores  are  so  steep,  and  the  woods  on  them  were  then 
so  high,  that,  as  you  looked  down  from  the  west  end,  it 
had  i he  appearance  of  an  amphitheatre  for  some  kind 


208  WALDEN. 

of  sylvan  spectacle.  I  have  spent  many  an  hour,  when 
I  was  younger,  floating  over  its  surface  as  the  zephyr 
willed,  having  paddled  my  boat  to  the  middle,  and  lying 
on  my  back  across  the  seats,  in  a  summer  forenoon 
dreaming  awake,  until  I  was  aroused  by  the  boat  touch 
ing  the  sand,  and  I  arose  to  see  what  shore  my  fates  had 
impelled  me  to ;  days  when  idleness  was  the  most  attrac 
tive  and  productive  industry.  Many  a  forenoon  have  I 
stolen  away,  preferring  to  spend  thus  the  most  valued 
part  of  the  day ;  for  I  was  rich,  if  not  in  money,  in  sun 
ny  hours  and  summer  days,  and  spent  them  lavishly; 
nor  do  I  regret  that  I  did  not  waste  more  of  them  in  the 
workshop  or  the  teacher's  desk.  But  since  I  left  those 
shores  the  woodchoppers  have  still  further  laid  them 
waste,  and  now  for  many  a  year  there  will  be  no  more 
rambling  through  the  aisles  of  the  wood,  with  occasional 
vistas  through  which  you  see  the  water.  My  Muse 
may  be  excused  if  she  is  silent  henceforth.  How  can 
you  expect  the  birds  to  sing  when  their  groves  are  cut 
down  ? 

Now  the  trunks  of  trees  on  the  bottom,  and  the  old 
log  canoe,  and  the  dark  surrounding  woods,  are  gone, 
and  the  villagers,  who  scarcely  know  where  it  lies,  in 
stead  of  going  to  the  pond  to  bathe  or  drink,  are  think 
ing  to  bring  its  water,  which  should  be  as  sacred  as  the 
Ganges  at  least,  to  the  village  in  a  pipe,  to  wash  their 
dishes  with  !  —  to  earn  their  Walden  by  the  turning  of  a 
cock  or  drawing  of  a  plug !  That  devilish  Iron  Horse, 
whose  ear-rending  neigh  is  heard  throughout  the  town, 
has  muddied  the  Boiling  Spring  with  his  foot,  and  he  it 
is  that  has  browsed  off  all  the  -woods  on  Walden  shore ; 
that  Trojan  horse,  with  a  thousand  men  in  hi?  belly,  in 
troduced  by  mercenary  Greeks!  Where  is  the  eoun« 


THE    PONDS.  209 

try's  champion,  the  Moore  of  Moore  Hall,  to  meet  him 
at  the  Deep  Cut  and  thrust  an  avenging  lance  between 
the  ribs  of  the  bloated  pest  ? 

Nevertheless,  of  all  the  characters  I  have  known, 
perhaps  Walden  wears  best,  and  best  preserves  its  pu 
rity.  Many  men  have  been  likened  to  it,  but  few  de 
serve  that  h"nor.  Though  the  woodchoppers  have  laid 
bare  first  this  shore  and  then  that,  and  the  Irish  have 
built  their  sties  by  it,  and  the  railroad  has  infringed  on 
its  border,  and  the  ice-men  have  skimmed  it  once,  it  is 
itsolf  unchanged,-  the  same  water  which  my  youthful 
eye;,  fell  on ;  all  the  change  is  in  me.  It  has  not  ac- 
q'lhed  one  permanent  wrinkle  after  all  its  ripples.  It 
js  perennially  young,  and  I  may  stand  and  see  a  swallow 
dip  apparently  to  pick  an  insect  from  its  surface  as  of 
yove.  It  struck  me  again  to-night,  as  if  I  had  not  seen 
it  almost  daily  for  more  than  twenty  years,  —  Why,  here 
is  Walden,  the  same  woodland  lake  that  I  discovered  so 
many  years  ago ;  where  a  forest  was  cut  down  last  win 
ter  another  is  springing  up  by  its  shore  as  lustily  as 
ever ;  the  same  thought  is  welling  up  to  its  surface  that 
was  then ;  it  is  the  same  liquid  joy  and  happiness  to  it 
self  and  its  Maker,  ay,  and  it  may  be  to  me.  It  is  the 
work  of  a  brave  man  surely,  in  whom  there  was  no 
guile !  He  rounded  this  water  with  his  hand,  deepened 
and  clarified  it  in  his  thought,  and  in  his  will  bequeathed 
it  to  Concord.  I  see  by  its  face  that  it  is  visited  by  the 
same  reflection ;  and  I  can  almost  say,  Walden,  is  it  you  ? 

It  is  no  dream  of  mine, 
To  ornament  a  line ; 

I  cannot  come  nearer  to  God  and  Heaven 
Than  I  live  to  Walden  even. 
I  am  its  stony  shore, 
And  the  breeze  that  passes  o'er  • 
14 


210  WALDEN. 

In  the  hollow  of  my  hand 
Are  its  water  and  its  sand, 
And  its  deepest  resort 
Lies  high  in  my  thought. 

The  cars  never  pause  to  look  at  it;  jet  I  fancy  ll.al 
the  engineers  and  firemen  and  brakemeu,  and  those  pas 
sengers  who  have  a  season  ticket  and  see  it  often,  are 
better  men  for  the  sight.  The  engineer  does  not  forget 
at  night,  or  his  nature  does  not,  that  he  has  beheld  this 
vision  of  serenity  and  purity  once  at  least  during  the 
day.  Though  seen  but  once,  it  helps  to  wash  out  State- 
street  and  the  engine's  soot.  One  proposes  that  it  be 
called  "  God's  Drop." 

I  have  said  that  Walden  has  no  visible  inlet  nor  out 
let,  but  it  is  on  the  one  hand  distantly  and  indirectly  re 
lated  to  Flints'  Pond,  which  is  more  elevated,  by  a 
chain  of  small  ponds  coming  from  that  quarter,  and  on 
the  other  directly  and  manifestly  to  Concord  River, 
which  is  lower,  by  a  similar  chain  of  ponds  through 
which  in  some  other  geological  period  it  may  have 
flowed,  and  by  a  little  digging,  which  God  forbid,  it  can 
be  made  to  flow  thither  again.  If  by  living  thus  re 
served  and  austere,  like  a  hermit  in  the  woods,  so  long, 
it  has  acquired  such  wonderful  purity,  who  would  not 
regret  that  the  comparatively  impure  waters  of  Flints 
Pond  should  be  mingled  with  it,  or  itself  should  ever  gc 
to  waste  its  sweetness  in  the  ocean  wave  ? 


Flints',  or  Sandy  Pond,  in  Lincoln,  our  greatest  lake 
and  inland  sea,  lies  about  a  mile  east  of  Walden.  It  is 
much  larger,  being  said  to  contain  one  hundred  and 
ninety-seven  acres,  and  is  more  fertile  in  fish  ;  but  it  ia 


THE    POXDS.  211 

comparatively  shallow,  and  not  remarkably  pure.  A 
walk  through  the  woods  thither  was  often  my  recreation. 
It  was  worth  the  while,  if  only  to  feel  the  wind  blow  on 
your  cheek  freely,  and  see  the  waves  run,  and  remem 
ber  the  life  of  mariners.  1  went  a-chestnutting  there  in 
the  fall,  on  windy  days,  when  the  nuts  were  dropping 
into  the  water  and  were  washed  to  my  feet;  and  one 
day,  as  I  crept  along  its  sedgy  shore,  the  fresh  spray 
blowing  in  my  face,  I  came  upon  the  mouldering  wreck 
of  a  boat,  the  sides  gone,  and  hardly  more  than  the  im 
pression  of  its  flat  bottom  left  amid  the  rushes ;  yet  its 
model  was  sharply  defined,  as  if  it  were  a  large  decayed 
pad,  with  its  veins.  It  was  as  impressive  a  wreck  as 
one  could  imagine  on  the  sea-shore,  and  had  as  good  a 
moral.  It  is  by  this  time  mere  vegetable  mould  and 
undistinguishable  pond  shore,  through  which  rushes  and 
flags  have  pushed  up.  I  used  to  admire  the  ripple 
marks  on  the  sandy  bottom,  at  the  north  end  of  this 
pond,  made  firm  and  hard  to  the  feet  of  the  wader  by 
the  pressure  of  the  water,  and  the  rushes  which  grew  in 
Indian  file,  in  waving  lines,  corresponding  to  these 
marks,  rank  behind  rank,  as  if  the  waves  had  planted 
them.  There  also  I  have  found,  in  considerable  quanti 
ties,  curious  balls,  composed  apparently  of  fine  grass  or 
roots,  of  pipewort  perhaps,  from  half  an  inch  to  four 
inches  in  diameter,  and  perfectly  spherical.  These 
wash  back  and  forth  in  shallow  water  on  a  sandy  bot 
tom,  and  are  sometimes  cast  on  the  shore.  They  are 
either  solid  grass,  or  have  a  little  sand  in  the  middle. 
At  first  you  would  say  that  they  were  formed  by  the  ac 
tion  of  the  waves,  like  a  pebble ;  yet  the  smallest  are 
made  of  equally  coarse  materials,  half  an  inch  long,  and 
*Jiey  are  produced  only  at  one  season  of  the  year. 


212  WALDEN. 

Moreover,  the  waves,  I  suspect,  do  not  so  much  con 
struct  as  wear  down  a  material  which  has  already  ac 
quired  consistency.  They  preserve  their  form  when 
dry  for  an  indefinite  period. 

Flints'  Pond!  Such  is  the  poverty  of  our  nomencla 
ture.  What  right  had  the  unclean  and  stupid  farmer, 
whose  farm  abutted  on  this  sky  water,  whose  shores  he 
has  ruthlessly  laid  bare,  to  give  his  name  to  it  ?  Some 
skin-flint,  who  loved  better  the  reflecting  surface  of  •  a 
dollar,  or  a  bright  cent,  in  which  he  could  see  his  own 
brazen  face ;  who  regarded  even  the  wild  ducks  which 
settled  in  it  as  trespassers ;  his  fingers  grown  into  crook 
ed  and  horny  talons  from  the  long  habit  of  grasping  har 
py-like  ;  —  so  it  is  not  named  for  me.  I  go  not  there  to 
see  him  nor  to  hear  of  him ;  who  never  saw  it,  who  nev 
er  bathed  in  it,  who  never  loved  it,  who  never  pro 
tected  it,  who  never  spoke  a  good  word  for  it,  nor 
thanked  God  that  he  had  made  it.  Rather  let  it  be 
named  from  the  fishes  that  swim  in  it,  the  wild  fowl  or 
quadrupeds  which  frequent  it,  the  wild  flowers  which 
grow  by  its  shores,  or  some  wild  man  or  child  the  thread 
of  whose  history  is  interwoven  with  its  own ;  not  from 
him  who  could  show  no  title  to  it  but  the  deed  which  a 
like-minded  neighbor  or  legislature  gave  him, — him 
who  thought  only  of  its  money  value ;  whose  presence 
perchance  cursed  all  the  shore ;  who  exhausted  the  land 
around  it,  and  would  fain  have  exhausted  the  waters 
within  it ;  who  regretted  only  that  it  was  not  English  hay 
or  cranberry  meadow,  —  there  was  nothing  to  redeem  it, 
forsooth,  in  his  eyes,  —  and  would  have  drained  and  sold 
it  for  the  mud  at  its  bottom.  It  did  not  turn  his  mill, 
and  it  was  no  privilege  to  him  to  behold  it.  I  respect 
not  his  labors,  his  farm  where  every  thing  has  its  pri;,et' 


THE   PONDS  213 

who  would  carry  the  landscape,  who  would  carry  hi.s 
God,  to  market,  if  he  could  get  any  thing  for  him ;  who 
goes  to  market  for  his  god  as  it  is  ;  on  whose  farm  noth 
ing  grows  free,  whose  fields  bear  no  crops,  whose  mead 
ows  no  flowers,  whose  trees  no  fruits,  but  dollars ;  who 
loves  not  the  beauty  of  his  fruits,  whose  fruits  are  not 
ripe  for  him  till  they  are  turned  to  dollars.  Give  me 
the  poverty  that  enjoys  true  wealth.  Farmers  are  re 
spectable  and  interesting  to  me  in  proportion  as  they  are 
poor, — poor  farmers.  A  model  farm  !  where  the  house 
stands  like  a  fungus  in  a  muck -heap,  chambers  for  men, 
horses,  oxen,  and  swine,  cleansed  and  uncleansed,  all 
contiguous  to  one  another !  Stocked  with  men !  A  great 
grease-spot,  redolent  of  manures  and  buttermilk !  Un 
der  a  high  state  of  cultivation,  being  manured  with  the 
hearts  and  brains  of  men !  As  if  you  were  to  raise  your 
potatoes  in  the  church-yard !  Such  is  a  model  farm. 

No,  no ;  if  the  fairest  features  of  the  landscape  are 
to  be  named  after  men,  let  them  be  the  noblest  and 
worthiest  men  alone.  Let  our  lakes  receive  as  true 
names  at  least  as  the  Icarian  Sea,  where  "  still  the 
shore  "  a  "  brave  attempt  resounds." 


Goose  Pond,  of  small  extent,  is  on  my  way  to  Flints' ; 
Fair-Haven,  an  expansion  of  Concord  River,  said  to 
contain  some  seventy  acres,  is  a  mile  south-west ;  and 
White  Pond,  of  about  forty  acres,  is  a  mile  and  a  half 
beyond  Fair-Haven.  This  is  my  lake  country.  These, 
with  Concord  River,  are  my  water  privileges ;  and  night 
and  day,  year  in  year  out,  they  grind  such  grist  as  I 
carry  to  them. 

Since  the  woodcutters,  and  the  railroad,  and  I  myself 


214  WALDEN. 

have  profaned  Walden,  perhaps  the  most  attractive, 
if  not  the  most  beautiful,  of  all  our  lakes,  the  gem  of 
the  woods,  is  White  Pond  ; — a  poor  name  from  its  com 
monness,  whether  derived  from  the  remarkable  purity 
of  its  waters  or  the  color  of  its  sands.  In  these  as  in 
other  respects,  however,  it  is  a  lesser  twin  of  Walden. 
Thej  are  so  much  alike  that  you  would  say  they  must 
be  connected  under  ground.  It  has  the  same  stony 
shore,  and  its  waters  are  of  the  same  hue.  As  at  Wal 
den,  in  sultry  dog-day  weather,  looking  down  through 
the  woods  on  some  of  its  bays  which  are  not  so  deep 
but  that  the  reflection  from  the  bottom  tinges  them,  its 
waters  are  of  a  misty  bluish-green  or  glaucous  color. 
Many  years  since  I  used  to  go  there  to  collect  the  sand 
by  cart-loads,  to  make  sand-paper  with,  and  I  have  con 
tinued  to  visit  it  ever  since.  One  who  frequents  it  pro 
poses  to  call  it  Virid  Lake.  Perhaps  it  might  be  called 
Yellow-Pine  Lake,  from  the  following  circumstance. 
About  fifteen  years  ago  you  could  see  the  top  of  a  pitch- 
pine,  of  the  kind  called  yellow-pine  hereabouts,  though 
it  is  not  a  distinct  species,  projecting  above  the  surface 
in  deep  water,  many  rods  from  the  shore.  It  was  even 
supposed  by  some  that  the  pond  had  siyik,  and  this  was 
one  of  the  primitive  forest  that  formerly  stood  there.  I 
find  that  even  so  long  ago  as  1792,  in  a  "  Topograph 
ical  Description  of  the  Town  of  Concord,"  by  one  of  its 
citizens,  in  the  Collections  of  the  Massachusetts  His 
torical  Society,  the  author,  after  speaking  of  Walden 
and  White  Ponds,  adds :  "  In  the  middle  of  the  latter 
may  be  seen,  when  the  water  is  very  low,  a  tree  which 
appears  as  if  it  grew  in  the  place  where  it  now  stands, 
although  the  roots  are  fifty  feet  below  the  surface  of  the 
water ;  the  top  of  this  tree  is  broken  off,  and  at  that 


THE    PONDS.  215 

place  measures  fourteen  inches  in  diameter."  In  the 
spring  of  '49  I  talked  with  the  man  who  lives  nearest 
the  pond  in  Sudbury,  who  told  me  that  it  was  he  who 
got  out  this  tree  ten  or  fifteen  years  before.  As  near 
as  he  could  remember,  it  stood  twelve  or  fifteen  rods 
from  the  shore,  where  the  water  was  thirty  or  forty  feet 
deep.  It  was  in  the  winter,  and  he  had  been  getting 
out  ice  in  the  forenoon,  and  had  resolved  that  in  the 
afternoon,  with  the  aid  of  his  neighbors,  he  would  take 
out  the  old  yellow-pine.  He  sawed  a  channel  in  the  ice 
toward  the  shore,  and  hauled  it  over  and  along  and  out 
on  to  the  ice  with  oxen ;  but,  before  he  had  gone  far  in 
his  work,  he  was  surprised  to  find  that  it  was  wrong  end 
upward,  with  the  stumps  of  the  branches  pointing  down, 
and  the  small  end  firmly  fastened  in  the  sandy  bottom. 
It  was  about  a  foot  in  diameter  at  the  big  end,  and  he 
had  expected  to  get  a  good  saw-log,  but  it  was  so  rotten 
as  to  be  fit  only  for  fuel,  if  for  that.  He  had  some  of  it 
in  his  shed  then.  There  were"  marks  of  an  axe  and  of 
woodpeckers  on  the  but.  He  thought  that  it  might  have 
been  a  dead  tree  on  the  shore,  but  was  finally  blown 
over  into  the  pond,  and  after  the  top  had  become  water 
logged,  while  the  but-end  was  still  dry  and  light,  had 
drifted  out  and  sunk  wrong  end  up.  His  father,  eighty 
years  old,  could  not  remember  when  it  was  not  there. 
Several  pretty  large  logs  may  still  be  seen  lying  on  the 
bottom,  where,  owing  to  the  undulation  of  the  surface, 
they  look  like  huge  water  snakes  in  motion. 

This  pond  has  rarely  been  profaned  by  a  boat,  for 
there  is  little  in  it  to  tempt  a.  fisherman.  Instead  of  the 
white  lily,  which  requires  mud,  or  the  common  sweet 
flag,  the  blue  flag  (Iris  versicolor)  grows  thinly  in  the 
pure  water,  rieing  from  the  stony  bottom  all  around  the 


216  WALDEN. 

shore,  where  it  is  visited  by  humming  birds  in  June, 
and  the  color  both  of  its  bluish  blades  and  its  flowers, 
and  especially  their  reflections,  are  in  singular  harmony 
with  the  glaucous  water. 

White  Pond  and  Walden  are  great  crystals  on  the 
surface  of  the  earth,  Lakes  of  Light.  If  they  were  per 
manently  congealed,  and  small  enough  to  be  clutched, 
they  would,  perchance,  be  carried  off  by  slaves,  like 
precious  stones,  to  adorn  the  heads  of  emperors ;  but 
being  liquid,  and  ample,  and  secured  to  us  and  our  suc 
cessors  forever,  we  disregard  them,  and  run  after  the 
diamond  of  Kohinoor.  They  are  too  pure  to  have  a 
market  value  ;  they  contain  no  muck.  How  much  more 
beautiful  than  our  lives,  how  much  more  transparent 
than  our  characters,  are  they !  We  never  learned  mean 
ness  of  them.  How  much  fairer  than  the  pool  before 
the  farmer's  door,  in  which  his  ducks  swim !  Hither 
the  clean  wild  ducks  come.  Nature  has  no  human  in 
habitant  who  appreciates  her.  The  birds  with  their 
plumage  and  their  notes  are  in  harmony  with  the  flow 
ers,  but  what  youth  or  maiden  conspires  with  the  wild 
luxuriant  beauty  of  Nature  ?  She  flourishes  moot  alone, 
far  from  the  towns  where  they  reside.  Talk  of  heaven  ! 
ye  disgrace  earth. 


BAKER    FARM. 


SOMETIMES  I  rambled  to  pine  groves,  standing  like 
templets,  or  like  fleets  at  sea,  full-rigged,  with  wavy 
boughs,  and  rippling  with  light,  so  soft  and  green  and 
shady  that  the  Druids  would  have  forsaken  their  oaks 
to  worship  in  them ;  or  to  the  cedar  wood  beyond  Flints' 
Pond,  where  the  trees,  covered  with  hoary  blue  berries, 
spiring  higher  and  higher,  are  fit  to  stand  before  Val 
halla,  and  the  creeping  juniper  covers  the  ground  with 
wreaths  full  of  fruit ;  or  to  swamps  where  the  usnea  lichen 
hangs  in  festoons  from  the  white-spruce  trees,  and  toad 
stools,  round  tables  of  the  swamp  gods,  cover  the  ground, 
ind  more  beautiful  fungi  adorn  the  stumps,  like  butter 
flies  or  shells,  vegetable  winkles  ;  where  the  swamp-pink 
and  dogwood  grow,  the  red  alder-berry  glows  like  eyes 
of  imps,  the  waxwork  grooves  and  crushes  the  hardest 
woods  in  its  folds,  and  the  wild-holly  berries  make  the 
beholder  forget  his  home  with  their  beauty,  and  he  is 
dazzled  and  tempted  by  nameless  other  wild  forbidden 
fruit:'.,  too  fair  for  mortal  taste.  Instead  of  calling  on 
some  scholar,  I  paid  many  a  visit  to  particular  trees,  of 
kinds  which  are  rare  in  this  neighborhood,  standing  far 

(217) 


218  WALDEN. 

away  in  the  middle  of  some  pasture,  or  in  the  depths  of 
a  wood  or  swamp,  or  on  a  hill -top  ;  such  as  the  black- 
birch,  of  which  we  have  some  handsome  specimens  two 
feet  in  diameter  ;  its  cousin  the  yellow-birch,  with  its 
loose  golden  vest,  perfumed  like  the  first ;  the  beech, 
which  has  so  neat  a  bole  and  beautifully  lichen -painted  $ 
perfect  in  all  its  details,  of  which,  excepting  scattered 
specimens,  I  know  but  one  small  grove  of  sizable  trees 
left  in  the  township,  supposed  by  some  to  have  been 
planted  by  the  pigeons  that  were  once  baited  with  beech 
nuts  near  by ;  it  is  worth  the  while  to  see  the  silver 
grain  sparkle  when  you  split  this  wood ;  the  bass ;  the 
hornbeam ;  the  celtis  occidentalism  or  false  elm,  of  which 
we  have  but  one  well-grown  ;  some  taller  mast  of  a  pine, 
a  shingle  tree,  or  a  more  perfect  hemlock  than  usual, 
standing  like  a  pagoda  in  the  midst  of  the  woods ;  and 
many  others  I  could  mention.  These  were  the  shrines 
I  visited  both  summer  and  winter. 

Once  it  chanced  that  I  stood  in  the  very  abutment  of 
a  rainbow's  arch,  which  filled  the  lower  stratum  of  the 
atmosphere,  tinging  the  grass  and  leaves  around,  and 
dazzling  me  as  if  I  looked  through  colored  crystal.  It 
was  a  lake  of  rainbow  light,  in  which,  for  a  short  while, 
I  lived  like  a  dolphin.  If  it  had  lasted  longer  it  might 
have  tinged  my  employments  and  life.  As  I  walked  on 
the  railroad  causeway,  I  used  to  wonder  at  the  halo  of 
light  around  my  shadow,  and  would  fain  fancy  myself 
one  of  the  elect.  One  who  visited  me  declared  that  the 
shadows  of  some  Irishmen  before  him  had  no  halo 
about  them,  that  it  was  only  natives  that  were  so  dis 
tinguished.  Benvenuto  Cellini  tells  us  in  his  memoirs, 
that,  after  a  certain  terrible  dream  or  vision  which  ht; 
had  during  his  confinement  in  the  castle  of  St.  Angelo, 


BAKER    FARM.  219 

a  resplendent  light  appeared  over  the  shadow  of  his 
head  at  morning  and  evening,  whether  he  was  in 
Italy  or  France,  and  it  was  particularly  conspicuous 
when  the  grass  was  moist  with  dew.  This  was  proba 
bly  the  same  phenomenon  to  which  I  have  referred^ 
'vhich  is  especially  observed  in  the  morning,  but  also  at 
other  times,  and  even  by  moonlight.  Though  a  con 
stant  one,  it  is  not  commonly  noticed,  and,  in  the  case  of 
an  excitable  imagination  like  Cellini's,  it  would  be  basis 
enough  for  superstition.  Beside,  he  tells  us  that  he 
showed  it  to  very  few.  But  are  they  not  indeed  dis 
tinguished  who  are  conscious  that  they  are  regarded 
at  all? 


I  set  out  one  afternoon  to  go  a-fishing  to  Fair- 
Haven,  through  the  woods,  to  eke  out  my  scanty  fare  of 
vegetables.  My  way  led  through  Pleasant  Meadow,  an 
adjunct  of  the  Baker  Farm,  that  retreat  of  which  a  poet 
has  since  sung,  beginning,  — 

"  Thy  entry  is  a  pleasant  field, 

Which  some  mossy  fruit  trees  yield 

Partly  to  a  ruddy  brook, 

By  gliding  musquash  undertook, 

And  mercurial  trout, 

Darting  about." 

I  thought  of  living  there  before  I  went  to  Walden. 
I  "hooked"  the  apples,  leaped  the  brook,  and  scared  the 
musquash  and  the  trout.  It  was  one  of  those  after 
noons  which  seem  indefinitely  long  before  one,  in  which 
many  events  may  happen,  a  large  portion  of  our  natural 
life,  though  it  was  already  half  spent  when  I  started.  By 


220  WALDEN. 

the  way  there  came  up  a  shower,  which  compelled  me 
to  stand  half  ar.  hour  under  a  pine,  piling  boughs  over 
my  head,  and  wearing  my  handkerchief  for  a  shed  ;  and 
when  at  length  I  had  made  one  cast  over  the  pickerel- 
weed,  standing  up  to  my  middle  in  water,  I  found  myself 
suddenly  in  the  shadow  of  a  cloud,  and  the  thunder 
began  to  rumble  with  such  emphasis  that  I  could  do 
no  more  than  listen  to  it.  The  gods  must  be  proud, 
thought  I,  with  such  forked  flashes  to  rout  a  poor  un 
armed  fisherman.  So  I  made  haste  for  shelter  to  the 
nearest  hut,  which  stood  half  a  mile  from  any  road,  but 
so  much  the  nearer  to  the  pond,  and  had  long  been 
uninhabited :  — 

"  And  here  a  poet  builded, 

In  the  completed  years, 
For  behold  a  trivial  cabin 
That  to  destruction  steers." 

So  the  Muse  fables.  But  therein,  as  I  found,  dwelt 
now  John  Field,  an  Irishman,  and  his  wife,  and  several 
children,  from  the  broad-faced  boy  who  assisted  his  fa 
ther  at  his  work,  and  now  came  running  by  his  side 
from  the  bog  to  escape  the  rain,  to  the  wrinkled,  sibyl- 
like,  cone-headed  infant  that  sat  upon  its  father's  knee 
as  in  the  palaces  of  nobles,  and  looked  out  from  its 
home  in  the  midst  of  wet  and  hunger  inquisitively  upon 
the  stranger,  with  the  privilege  of  infancy,  not  knowing 
but  it  was  the  last  of  a  noble  line,  and  the  hope  and  cy 
nosure  of  the  world,  instead  of  John  Field's  poor  starve 
ling  brat.  There  we  sat  together  under  that  part  of 
the  roof  which  leaked  the  least,  while  it  showered  and 
thundered  without.  I  had  sat  there  many  times  of  old 
before  the  ship  was  built  that  floated  this  family  to 


BAKER    FARM.  221 

America.  An  honest,  hard-working,  but  shiftless  man 
plainly  was  John  Field ;  and  his  wife,  she  too  was  brave 
to  cook  so  many  successive  dinners,  in  the  recesses  of 
that  lofty  stove ;  with  round  greasy  face  and  bare  breast, 
still  thinking  to  improve  her  condition  one  day ;  with 
the  never  absent  mop  in  one  hand,  and  yet  no  effects 
of  it  visible  any  where.  The  chickens,  which  had  also 
taken  shelter  here  from  the  rain,  stalked  about  the  room 
like  members  of  the  family,  too  humanized  methought 
to  roast  well.  They  stood  and  looked  in  my  eye  or 
pecked  at  my  shoe  significantly.  Meanwhile  my  host 
told  me  his  story,  how  hard  he  worked  "  bogging  "  for  a 
neighboring  farmer,  turning  up  a  meadow  with  a  spade 
or  bog  hoe  at  the  rate  of  ten  dollars  an  acre  and  the  use 
of  the  land  with  manure  for  one  year,  and  his  little 
broad-faced  son  worked  cheerfully  at  his  father's  side 
the  while,  not  knowing  how  poor  a  bargain  the  latter 
had  made.  I  tried  to  help  him  with  my  experience, 
telling  him  that  he  was  one  of  my  nearest  neighbors, 
and  that  I  too,  who  came  a-fishing  here,  and  looked  like 
a  loafer,  was  getting  my  living  like  himself;  that  I  lived 
in  a  tight,  light,  and  clean  house,  which  hardly  cost  more 
than  the  annual  rent  of  such  a  ruin  as  his  commonly 
amounts  to ;  and  how,  if  he  chose,  he  might  in  a  month 
or  two  build  himself  a  palace  of  his  own ;  that  I  did  not 
use  tea,  nor  coffee,  nor  butter,  nor  milk,  nor  fresh  meat, 
and  so  did  not  have  to  work  to  get  them ;  again,  as  I 
did  not  work  hard,  I  did  not  have  to  eat  hard,  and  it  cost 
me  but  a  trifle  for  my  food ;  but  as  he  began  with  tea, 
and  coffee,  and  butter,  and  milk,  and  beef,  he  had  to 
work  hard  to  pay  for  them,  and  when  he  had  worked 
hard  he  had  to  eat  hard  again  to  repair  the  waste  of  hia 
B/stem, — and  so  it  was  as  broad  as  it  was  long,  indeed 


222  WALDEN. 

it  was  broader  than  it  was  long,  for  he  was  discontented 
and  wasted  his  life  into  the  bargain ;  and  yet  he  had 
rated  it  as  a  gain  in  corning  to  America,  that  here  you 
could  get  tea,  and  coffee,  and  meat  every  day.  But  the 
only  true  America  is  that  country  where  you  are  at  lib 
erty  to  pursue  such  a  mode  of  life  as  may  enable  you  to 
do  without  these,  and  where  the  state  does  not  endeavor 
to  compel  you  to  sustain  the  slavery  and  war  and  other 
superfluous  expenses  which  directly  or  indirectly  result 
from  the  use  of  such  things.  For  I  purposely  talked  to 
him  as  if  he  were  a  philosopher,  or  desired  to  be  one. 
I  should  be  glad  if  all  the  meadows  on  the  earth  were 
left  in  a  wild  state,  if  that  were  the  consequence  of  men's 
beginning  to  redeem  themselves.  A  man  will  not  need 
to  study  history  to  find  out  what  is  best  for  his  own  cul 
ture.  But  alas !  the  culture  of  an  Irishman  is  an  enter 
prise  to  be  undertaken  with  a  sort  of  moral  bog  hoe.  I 
told  him,  that  as  he  worked  so  hard  at  bogging,  he  re 
quired  thick  boots  and  stout  clothing,  which  yet  were 
soon  soiled  and  worn  out,  but  I  wore  light  shoes  and 
thin  clothing,  which  cost  not  half  so  much,  though  he 
might  think  that  I  was  dressed  like  a  gentleman,  (which, 
however,  was  not  the  case,)  and  in  an  hour  or  two,  with 
out  labor,  but  as  a  recreation,  I  could,  if  I  wished,  catch 
as  many  fish  as  I  should  want  for  two  days,  or  earn 
enough  money  to  support  me  a  week.  If  he  and  his 
family  would  live  simply,  they  might  all  go  a-huckle- 
berrying  In  the  summer  for  their  amusement.  John 
heaved  a  sigh  at  this,  and  his  wife  stared  with  arms 
a-kimbo,  and  both  appeared  to  be  wondering  if  they  had 
capital  enough  to  begin  such  a  course  with,  or  aritkaie- 
tic  enough  to  carry  it  through.  It  was  sailing  by  dead 
to  them,  and  they  saw  not  clearly  IIOTT  to 


BAKER    FARM.  223 

make  liieir  port  so;  therefore  I  suppose  they  still  take 
life  bravely,  after  their  fashion,  face  to  face,  giving  it 
tooth  and  nail,  not  having  skill  to  split  its  massive  col 
umns  with  any  fine  entering  wedge,  and  rout  it  in  de 
tail; — thinking  to  deal  with  it  roughly,  as  one  should 
handle  a  thistle.  But  they  fight  at  an  overwhelming 
disadvantage, — living,  John  Field,  alas!  without  arith 
metic,  and  failing  so. 

"  Do  you  ever  fish  ? "  I  asked.  "  0  yes,  I  catch  a 
mess  now  and  then  when  I  am  lying  by ;  good  perch  I 
catch."  "  What's  your  bait ? "  "I  catch  shiners  with 
fish-worms,  and  bait  the  perch  with  them."  "You'd 
better  go  now,  John,"  said  his  wife  with  glistening  and 
hopeful  face ;  but  John  demurred. 

The  shower  was  now  over,  and  a  rainbow  above  the 
eastern  woods  promised  a  fair  evening ;  so  I  took  my 
departure.  When  I  had  got  without  I  asked  for  a  dish, 
hoping  to  get  a  sight  of  the  well  bottom,  to  complete  my 
survey  of  the  premises ;  but  there,  alas !  are  shallows 
and  quicksands,  and  rope  broken  withal,  and  bucket  ir 
recoverable.  Meanwhile  the  right  culinary  vessel  was 
selected,  water  was  seemingly  distilled,  and  after  consul 
tation  and  long  delay  passed  out  to  the  thirsty  one, — not 
yet  suffered  to  cool,  not  yet  to  settle.  Such  gruel  sus 
tains  life  here,  I  thought ;  so,  shutting  my  eyes,  and  ex 
cluding  the  motes  by  a  skilfully  directed  under-current, 
I  drank  to  genuine  hospitality  the  heartiest  draught  I 
could.  I  am  not  squeamish  in  such  cases  when  man 
ners  are  concerned. 

As  I  was  leaving  the  Irishman's  roof  after  the  rain, 
bending  my  steps  again  to  the  pond,  my  haste  to  catch 
pickerel,  wading  in  retired  meadows,  in  sloughs  and 
bog-boles,  in  forlorn  and  savage  places,  appeared  for  an 


224  WALDEN. 

instant  trivial  to  me  who  had  been  sent  to  school  and 
college ;  but  as  I  ran  down  the  hill  toward  the  redden 
ing  west,  with  the  rainbow  over  my  shoulder,  and  some 
faint  tinkling  sounds  borne  to  my  ear  through  the  cleansed 
air,  from  I  know  not  what  quarter,  my  Good  Genius 
seemed  to  say, —  Go  fish  and  hunt  far  and  wide  day 
by  day, — farther  and  wider,  —  and  rest  thee  by  many 
brooks  and  hearth-sides  without  misgiving.  Remember 
thy  Creator  in  the  days  of  thy  youth.  Rise  free  from 
care  before  the  dawn,  and  seek  adventures.  Let  the 
noon  find  thee  by  other  lakes,  and  the  night  overtake 
thee  every  where  at  )\ome.  There  are  no  larger  fields 
than  these,  no  worthier  games  than  may  here  be  played. 
Grow  wild  according  to  thy  nature,  like  these  sedges 
and  brakes,  which  will  never  become  English  hay.  Let 
the  thunder  rumble ;  what  if  it  threaten  ruin  to  farmers 
crops  ?  that  is  not  its  errand  to  thee.  Take  shelter  un 
der  the  cloud,  while  they  flee  to  carts  and  sheds.  Let 
not  to  get  a  living  be  thy  trade,  but  thy  sport.  Enjoy 
the  land,  but  own  it  not.  Through  want  of  enterprise 
and  faith  men  are  where  they  are,  buying  and  selling, 
and  spending  their  lives  like  serfs. 
O  Baker  Farm ! 

"  Landscape  where  the  richest  element 
Is  a  little  sunshine  innocent."    *    * 

«'  No  one  runs  to  revel 
On  thy  rail-fenced  lea."    *    * 

"  Debate  with  no  man  hast  thou, 

With  questions  art  never  perplexed, 
As  tame  at  the  first  sight  as  now, 

In  thy  plain  russet  gabardine  dressed.'      *    • 

"  C'ome  ye  who  love, 
And  ye  who  hate. 


BAKER   FARM.  225 

Children  of  the  Holy  Dove, 

And  Guy  Faux  of  the  state, 
And  hang  conspiracies 
From  the  tough  rafters  of  the  trees  !  " 

Men  come  tamely  home  at  night  only  from  the  next 
field  or  street,  where  their  household  echoes  haunt,  and 
their  life  pines  because  it  breathes  its  own  breath  over 
again ;  their  shadows  morning  and  evening  reach  far 
ther  than  their  daily  steps.  We  should  come  home 
from  far,  from  adventures,  and  perils,  and  discoveries 
every  day,  with  new  experience  and  character. 

Before  I  had  reached  the  pond  some  fresh  impulse 
had  brought  out  John  Field,  with  altered  mind,  letting 
go  "  bogging "  ere  this  sunset.  But  he,  poor  man,  dis 
turbed  only  a  couple  of  fins  while  I  was  catching  a  fair 
string,  and  he  said  it  was  his  luck ;  but  when  we  changed 
seats  in  the  boat  luck  changed  seats  too.  Poor  John 
Field!  —  I  trust  he  does  not  read  this,  unless  he  will 
improve  by  it,— *•  thinking  to  live  by  some  derivative  old 
country  mode  in  this  primitive  new  country, — to  catch 
perch  with  shiners.  It  is  good  bait  sometimes,  I  allow. 
With  his  horizon  all  his  own,  yet  he  a  poor  man,  born  to 
be  poor,  with  his  inherited  Irish  poverty  or  poor  life,  his 
Adam's  grandmother  and  boggy  ways,  not  to  rise  in  this 
world,  he  nor  his  posterity,  till  their  wading  webbed 
bog-trotting  feet  get  talaria  to  their  heels. 
15 


HIGHER   LAWS. 


As  I  came  home  through  the  woods  with  my  string 
of  fish,  trailing  my  pole,  it  being  now  quite  dark,  I 
caught  a  glimpse  of  a  woodchuck  stealing  across  my 
path,  and  felt  a  strange  thrill  of  savage  delight,  and  was 
strongly  tempted  to  seize  and  devour  him  raw ;  not  that 
I  was  hungry  then,  except  for  that  wildness  which  he 
represented.  Once  or  twice,  however,  while  I  lived  at 
the  pond,  I  found  myself  ranging  the  woods,  like  a  half- 
starved  hound,  with  a  strange  abandonment,  seeking 
some  kind  of  venison  which  I  might  devour,  and  no 
morsel  could  have  been  too  savage  for  me.  The  wildest 
scenes  had  become  unaccountably  familiar.  I  found  in 
myself,  and  still  h'nd,  an  instinct  toward  a  higher,  or,  as 
it  is  named,  spiritual  life,  as  do  most  men,  and  another 
toward  a  primitive  rank  and  savage  one,  and  1  rever 
ence  them  both.  I  love  the  wild  not  less  than  the  good. 
The  wildness  and  adventure  that  are  in  fishing  still  rec 
ommended  it  to  me.  I  like  sometimes  to  take  rank  hold 
on  life  and  spend  my  day  more  as  the  animals  do.  Per- 
naps  1  have  owed  to  this  employment  and  to  hunting, 
quite  young,  my  closest  acquaintance  with  Nature. 

(223) 


HIGHER    LAWS.  227 

They  ^arly  introduce  us  to  and  detain  us  in  scenery  with 
'which  otherwise,  at  that  age,  we  should  have  little  ac 
quaintance.  Fishermen,  hunters,  woodchoppers,  and 
others,  spending  their  lives  in  the  fields  and  woods,  in  a 
peculiar  sense  a  part  of  Nature  themselves,  are  often  in 
a  more  favorable  mood  for  observing  her,  in  the  inter 
vals  of  their  pursuits,  than  philosophers  or  poets  even, 
who  approach  her  with  expectation.  She  is  not  afraid 
to  exhibit  herself  to  them.  The  traveller  on  the  prairie 
is  naturally  a  hunter,  on  the  head  waters  of  the  Mis 
souri  and  Columbia  a  trapper,  and  at  the  Falls  of  St. 
Mary  a  fisherman.  He  who  is  only  a  traveller  learns 
things  at  second-hand  and  by  the  halves,  and  is  poor 
authority.  We  are  most  interested  when  science  re 
ports  what  those  men  already  know  practically  or  in 
stinctively,  for  that  alone  is  a  true  humanity,  or  account 
of  human  experience. 

They  mistake  who  assert  that  the  Yankee  has  few 
amusements,  because  he  has  not  so  many  public  holidays, 
and  men  and  boys  do  not  play  so  many  games  as  they 
do  in  England,  for  here  the  more  primitive  but  solitary 
amusements  of  hunting  fishing  and  the  like  have  not  yet 
given  place  to  the  former.  Almost  every  New  England 
boy  among  my  contemporaries  shouldered  a  fowling  piece 
between  the  ages  of  ten  and  fourteen  ;  and  his  hunting 
and  fishing  grounds  were  not  limited  like  the  preserves 
of  an  English  nobleman,  but  were  more  boundless  even 
than  those  of  a  savage.  No  wonder,  then,  that  he  did 
not  oftener  stay  to  play  on  the  common.  But  already  a 
change  is  taking  place,  owing,  not  to  an  increased  human 
ity,  but  to  an  increased  scarcity  of  game,  for  perhaps  the 
hunter  is  the  greatest  friend  of  the  animals  hunted,  .not 
excepting  the  Humane  Society. 


228  WALDEN. 

Moreover,  when  at  the  pond,  I  wished  sometimes  tc 
add  fish  to  my  fare  for  variety.  I  have  actually  fished 
from  the  same  kind  of  necessity  that  the  first  fishers 
did.  Whatever  humanity  I  might  conjure  up  against  it 
was  all  factitious,  and  concerned  my  philosophy  more 
than  my  feelings.  I  speak  of  fishing  only  now,  for  I 
had  long  felt  differently  about  fowling,  and  sold  my  gun 
before  I  went  to  the  woods.  Not  that  I  am  less  hu 
mane  than  others,  but  I  did  not  perceive  that  my  feel 
ings  were  much  affected.  I  did  not  pity  the  fishes  nor 
the  worms.  This  was  habit.  As  for  fowling,  during 
the  last  years  that  I  carried  a  gun  my  excuse  was  that 
I  was  studying  ornithology,  and  sought  only  new  or  rare 
birds.  But  I  confess  that  I  am  now  inclined  to  think 
that  there  is  a  finer  way  of  studying  ornithology  than 
this.  It  requires  so  much  closer  attention  to  the  habits 
of  the  birds,  that,  if  for  that  reason  only,  I  have  been 
willing  to  omit  the  gun.  Yet  notwithstanding  the  ob 
jection  on  the  score  of  humanity,  I  am  compelled  to 
doubt  if  equally  valuable  sports  are  ever  substituted  for 
these ;  and  when  some  of  my  friends  have  asked  me 
anxiously  about  their  boys,  whether  they  should  let  them 
hunt,  I  have  answered,  yes, — remembering  that  it  was 
one  of  the  best  parts  of  my  education,  —  make  them 
hunters,  though  sportsmen  only  at  first,  if  possible, 
mighty  hunters  at  last,  so  that  they  shall  not  find  game 
large  enough  for  them  in  this  or  any  vegetable  wilder 
ness,  —  hunters  as  well  as  fishers  of  men.  Thus  far  I 
am  of  the  opinion  of  Chaucer's  nun,  who 

"  yare  not  of  the  text  a  pulled  hen 
That  saith  that  hunters  ben  not  holy  men." 

There  is  a  period  in  the  history  of  the  individual,  as  of 


HIGHER    LAWS.  229 

the,  race,  when  the  hunters  are  the  "  best  men,"  as  the 
Algonquins  called  them.  We  cannot  but  pity  the  boy 
who  has  never  fired  a  gun;  he  is  no  more  humane, 
while  his  education  has  been  sadly  neglected.  This  was 
my  answer  with  respect  tc  those  youths  who  were  bent 
on  this  pursuit,  trusting  that  they  would  soon  outgrow 
it.  No  humane  being,  past  the  thoughtless  age  of  boy 
hood,  will  wantonly  murder  any  creature,  which  holds 
its  life  by  the  same  tenure  that  he  does.  The  hare  in 
its  extremity  cries  like  a  child.  I  warn  you,  mothers, 
that  my  sympathies  do  not  always  make  the  usual  phil- 
anthropic  distinctions. 

Such  is  oftenest  the  young  man's  introduction  to  the 
forest,  and  the  most  original  part  of  himself.  He  goes 
thither  at  first  as  a  hunter  and  fisher,  until  at  last,  if  he 
has  the  seeds  of  a  better  life  in  him,  he  distinguishes 
his  proper  objects,  as  a  poet  or  naturalist  it  may  be,  and 
leaves  the  gun  and  fish-pole  behind.  The  mass  of 
men  are  still  and  always  young  in  this  respect.  la 
some  countries  a  hunting  parson  is  no  uncommon  sight. 
Such  a  one  might  make  a  good  shepherd's  dog,  but  is 
far  from  being  the  Good  Shepherd.  I  have  been  sur 
prised  to  consider  that  the  only  obvious  employment, 
except  wood-chopping,  ice-cutting,  or  the  like  business, 
which  ever  to  my  knowledge  detained  at  Walden  Pond 
for  a  whole  half  day  any  of  my  fellow-citizens,  whether 
fathers  or  children  of  the  town,  with  just  one  exception, 
was  fishing.  Commonly  they  did  not  think  that  they 
were  lucky,  or  well  paid  for  their  time,  unless  they  got 
a  long  string  of  fish,  though  they  had  the  opportunity 
of  seeing  the  pond  all  the  while.  They  might  go  there 
a  thousand  times  before  the  sediment  of  fishing  would 
sink  to  the  bottom  and  leave  the'.r  purpose  pure;  but  no 


230  WALDEN. 

doubt  such  a  clarifying  process  would  be  going  on  all 
the  while.  The  governor  and  his  council  faintly  remem 
ber  the  pond,  for  they  went  a-fishing  there  when  they 
were  boys ;  but  now  they  are  too  old  and  dignified  to  go 
a-fishing,  and  so  they  know  it  no  more  forever.  Yet 
even  they  expect  to  go  to  heaven  at  last.  If  the  legis 
lature  regards  it,  it  is  chiefly  to  regulate  the  number  of 
hooks  to  be  used  there ;  but  they  know  nothing  about 
the  hook  of  hooks  with  which  to  angle  for  the  pond 
itself,  impaling  the  legislature  for  a  bait.  Thus,  even  in 
civilized  communities,  the  embryo  man  passes  through 
the  hunter  stage  of  development. 

I  have  found  repeatedly,  of  late  years,  that  I  cannot 
fish  without  falling  a  little  in  self-respect.  I  have  tried 
it  again  and  again.  I  have  skill  at  it,  and,  like  many 
of  my  fellows,  a  certain  instinct  for  it,  which  revives 
from  time  to  time,  but  always  when  I  have  done  I  feel 
that  it  would  have  been  better  if  I  had  not  fished.  I 
think  that  I  do  not  mistake.  It  is  a  faint  intimation,  yet 
so  are  the  first  streaks  of  morning.  There  is  unques 
tionably  this  instinct  in  me  which  belongs  to  the  lower 
orders  of  creation ;  yet  with  every  year  I  am  less  a 
fisherman,  though  without  more  humanity  or  even  wis 
dom  ;  at  present  I  am  no  fisherman  at  all.  But  I  see 
that  if  I  were  to  live  in  a  wilderness  I  should  again  be 
tempted  to  become  a  fisher  and  hunter  in  earnest.  Be 
side,  there  is  something  essentially  unclean  about  this 
diet  and  all  flesh,  and  I  began  to  see  where  housework 
commences,  and  whence  the  endeavor,  which  costs  so 
much,  to  wear  a  tidy  and  respectable  appearance  each 
day,  to  keep  the  house  sweet  and  free  from  all  ill  odors 
and  sights.  Having  been  my  own  butcher  and  scullion 
and  cook,  as  well  as  the  gentleman  for  whom  the  dishes 


HIGHLY    LAWS.  231 

were  served  up,  I  can  speak  from  an  unusually  complete 
experience.  The  practical  objection  to  animal  food  in 
my  case  was  its  uncleanness ;  and,  besides,  when  I  had 
caught  and  cleaned  and  cooked  and  eaten  my  fish,  they 
seemed  not  to  have  fed  me  essentially.  It  was  insignifi 
cant  and  unnecessary,  and  cost  more  than  it  came  to* 
A  little  bread  or  a  few  potatoes  would  have  done  as 
well,  with  less  trouble  and  filth.  Like  many  of  my 
contemporaries,  I  had  rarely  for  many  years  used  ani 
mal  food,  or  tea,  or  coffee,  &c. ;  not  so  much  because  «f 
any  ill  effects  which  I  had  traced  to  them,  as  because  they 
were  not  agreeable  to  my  imagination.  The  repugnance  to 
animal  food  is  not  the  effect  of  experience,  but  is  an  in 
stinct.  It  appeared  more  beautiful  to  live  low  and  fare 
hard  in  many  respects ;  and  though  I  never  did  so,  I 
went  far  enough  to  please  my  imagination.  I  believe 
that  every  man  who  has  ever  been  earnest  to  preserve 
his  higher  or  poetic  faculties  in  the  best  condition  has 
been  particularly  inclined  to  abstain  from  animal  food, 
and  from  much  food  of  any  kind.  It  is  a  significant 
fact,  stated  by  entomologists,  I  find  it  in  Kirby  and 
Spence,  that  "  some  insects  in  their  perfect  state,  though 
furnished  with  organs  of  feeding,  make  no  use  of  them  ;  " 
and  they  lay  it  down  as  "  a  general  rule,  that  almost  all 
insects  in  this  state  eat  much  less  than  in  that  of  larvae. 
The  voracious  caterpillar  when  transformed  into  a  but 
terfly,"  .  .  "and  the  gluttonous  maggot  when  become 
a  fly,"  content  themselves  with  a  drop  or  two  of  honey 
or  some  other  sweet  liquid.  The  abdomen  under  the 
wings  of  the  butterfly  still  represents  tho  larva.  This 
is  the  tid-bit  which  tempts  his  insectivorous  fate.  The 
gross  feeder  is  a  man  in  the  larva  state ;  and  there  are 


232  WALDEN. 

whole  nations  in  that  condition,  nations  without  fancy  or 
imagination,  whose  vast  abdomens  betray  them. 

It  is  hard  to  provide  and  cook  so  simple  and  clean  a 
diet  as  will  not  offend  the  imagination  ;  but  this,  I  think, 
is  to  be  fed  when  we  feed  the  body ;  they  should  both 
sit  down  at  the  same  table.  Yet  perhaps  this  may  be 
done.  The  fruits  eaten  temperately  need  not  make  us 
ashamed  of  our  appetites,  nor  interrupt  the  worthiest 
pursuits.  But  put  an  extra  condiment  into  your  dish, 
and  it  will  poison  you.  It  is  not  worth  the  while  to  live 
by  rich  cookery.  Most  men  would  feel  shame  if  caught 
preparing  with  their  own  hands  precisely  such  a  dinner, 
whether  of  animal  or  vegetable  food,  as  is  every  day 
prepared  for  them  by  others.  Yet  till  this  is  otherwise 
we  are  not  civilized,  and,  if  gentlemen  and  ladies,  are 
not  true  men  and  women.  This  certainly  suggests  what 
change  is  to  be  made.  It  may  be  vain  to  ask  why  the 
imagination  will  not  be  reconciled  to  flesh  and  fat.  I 
am  satisfied  that  it  is  not.  Is  it  not  a  reproach  that  man 
is  a  carniverous  animal  ?  True,  he  can  and  does  live, 
in  a  great  measure,  by  preying  on  other  animals  ;  but  this 
is  a  miserable  way,  —  as  any  one  who  will  go  to  snaring 
rabbits,  or  slaughtering  lambs,  may  learn,  —  and  he  will 
be  regarded  as  a  benefactor  of  his  race  who  shall  teach 
•nan  to  confine  himself  to  a  more  innocent  and  whole- 
>ome  diet.  Whatever  my  own  practice  may  be,  I  have 
jo  doubt  that  it  is  a  part  of  the  destiny  of  the  human 
face,  in  its  gradual  improvement,  to  leave  off  eating  an 
imals,  as  surely  as  the  savage  tribes  have  left  off  eating 
each  other  when  they  came  in  contact  with  the  more  civ 
ilized. 

[f  one  listens  to  the  faintest  but  constant  suggestions 


HIGHER    LAWS.  233 

of  his  genius,  which  are  certainly  true,  he  sees  not  to 
what  extremes,  or  even  insanity,  it  may  lead  him ;  and 
yet  that  way,  as  he  grows  more  resolute  and  faithful,  his 
road  lies.  The  faintest  assured  objection  which  one 
healthy  man  feels  .will  at  length  prevail  over  the  argu 
ments  and  customs  of  mankind.  No  man  ever  followed 
his  genius  till  it  misled  him.  Though  the  result  were 
bodily  weakness,  yet  perhaps  no  one  can  say  that  the 
consequences  were  to  be  regretted,  for  these  were  a  life 
in  conformity  to  higher  principles.  If  the  day  and  the 
night  are  such  that  you  greet  them  with  joy,  and  life 
emits  a  fragrance  like  flowers  and  sweet-scented  herbs, 
is  more  elastic,  more  starry,  more  immortal,  —  that  is 
your  success.  All  nature  is  your  congratulation,  and 
you  have  cause  momentarily  to  bless  yourself.  The 
greatest  gains  and  values  are  farthest  from  being  appre 
ciated.  We  easily  come  to  doubt  if  they  exist.  "We 
soon  forget  them.  They  are  the  highest  reality.  Per 
haps  the  facts  most  astounding  and  most  real  are  never 
communicated  by  man  to  man.  The  true  harvest  of 
my  daily  life  is  somewhat  as  intangible  and  indescriba 
ble  as  the  tints  of  morning  or  evening.  It  is  a  little 
star-dust  caught,  a  segment  of  the  rainbow  which  I  have 
clutched. 

Yet,  for  my  part,  I  was  never  unusually  squeamish  ; 
I  could  sometimes  eat  a  fried  rat  with  a  good  relish,  if 
it  were  necessary.  I  am  glad  to  have  drunk  water  so 
long,  for  the  same  reason  that  I  prefer  J,ne  natural  sky 
to  an  opium-eater's  heaven.  I  would  lain  keep  sober 
always ;  and  there  are  infinite  degrees  of  drunkenness. 
I  believe  that  water  is  the  only  drink  for  a  wise  man  ; 
wine  is  not  so  noble  a  liquor ;  and  think  of  dashing  the 
hopes  of  a  morning  with  a  cup  of  warm  coffee,  or  of  an 


234  WALDEN. 

evening  with  a  dish  of  tea !  Ah,  how  low  I  fall  when 
I  am  tempted  by  them  !  Even  music  may  be  intoxicat 
ing.  Such  apparently  slight  causes  destroyed  Greece 
and  Rome,  and  will  destroy  England  and  America.  Of 
all  ebriosity,  who  does  not  prefer  to  be  intoxicated  by 
the  air  he  breathes  ?  I  have  found  it  to  be  the  most 
serious  objection  to  coarse  labors  long  continued,  that 
they  compelled  me  to  eat  and  drink  coarsely  also.  But 
to  tell  the  truth,  I  find  myself  at  present  somewhat  less 
particular  in  these  respects.  I  carry  less  religion  to  the 
table,  ask  no  blessing ;  not  because  I  am  wiser  than  I 
was,  but,  I  am  obliged  to  confess,  because,  however 
much  it  is  to  be  regretted,  with  years  I  have  grown 
more  coarse  and  indifferent.  Perhaps  these  questions 
are  entertained  only  in  youth,  as  most  believe  of  poetry. 
My  practice  is  "  nowhere,"  my  opinion  is  here.  Never 
theless  I  am  far  from  regarding  myself  as  one  of  those 
privileged  ones  to  whom  the  Ved  refers  when  it  says, 
that  "  he  who  has  true  faith  in  the  Omnipresent  Su 
preme  Being  may  eat  all  that  exists,"  that  is,  is  not 
bound  to  inquire 'what  is  his  food,  or  who  prepares  it; 
and  even  in  their  case  it  is  to  be  observed,  as  a  Hindoo 
commentator  has  remarked,  that  the  Vedant  limits  this 
privilege  to  *'  the  time  of  distress." 

Who  has  not  sometimes  derived  an  inexpressible  sat 
isfaction  from  his  food  in  which  appetite  had  no  share  ? 
I  have  been  thrilled  to  think  that  I  owed  a  mental  per 
ception  to  the  commonly  gross  sense  of  taste,  that  I  have 
been  inspired  through  the  palate,  that  some  berries  which 
I  had  eaten  on  a  hill-side  had  fed  my  genius.  "  The 
soul  not  being  mistress  of  herself,"  says  Thseng-tseu, 
"  one  looks,  and  one  does  not  see ;  one  listens,  and  one 
does  not  bear;  one  eats,  and  one  does  not  know  ibo 


HIGHER    LAWS.  235 

Bavor  of  food."  He  who  distinguishes  the  true  savor  of 
his  food  can  never  be  a  glutton ;  he  who  does  not  cannot 
be  otherwise.  A  puritan  may  go  to  his  brown-bread 
crust  with  as  gross  an  appetite  as  ever  an  alderman  to 
his  turtle.  Not  that  food  which  entereth  into  the  mouth 
defileth  a  man,  but  the  appetite  with  which  it  is  eaten. 
It  is  neither  the  quality  nor  the  quantity,  but  the  devo 
tion  to  sensual  savors ;  when  that  which  is  eaten  is  not 
a  viand  to  sustain  our  animal,  or  inspire  our  spiritual 
life,  but  food  for  the  worms  that  possess  us.  If  the  hunt 
er  has  a  taste  for  mud-turtles,  muskrats,  and  other  such 
savage  tid-bits,  the  fine  lady  indulges  a  taste  for  jelly 
made  of  a  calf's  foot,  or  for  sardines  from  over  the  sea, 
and  they  are  even.  He  goes  to  the  mill-pond,  she  to  her 
preserve-pot.  The  wonder  is  how  they,  how  you  and  I, 
can  live  this  slimy  beastly  life,  eating  and  drinking. 

Our  whole  life  is  startlingly  moral.  There  is  never 
an  instant's  truce  between  virtue  and  vice.  Goodness 
is  the  only  investment  that  never  fails.  In  the  music 
of  the  harp  which  trembles  round  the  world  it  is  the 
insisting  on  this  which  thrills  us.  The  harp  is  the 
travelling  patter er  for  the  Universe's  Insurance  Com 
pany,  recommending  its  laws,  and  our  little  goodness  is 
all  the  assessment  that  we  pay.  Though  the  youth  at 
last  grows  indifferent,  the  laws  of  the  universe  are  not 
indifferent,  but  are  forever  on  the  side  of  the  most  sen 
sitive.  Listen  to  every  zephyr  for  some  reproof,  for  it 
is  surely  there,  and  he  is  unfortunate  who  does  not  hear 
it.  We  cannot  touch  a  string  or  move  a  stop  but  the 
charming  moral  transfixes  us.  Many  an  irksome  noise, 
go  a  long  way  off,  is  heard  as  music,  a  proud  sweet 
satire  on  the  meanness  of  our  lives. 

"We  are  conscious  of  an  animal  in  us,  which  awakens 


236  WALDEN. 

in  proportion  as  our  higher  nature  slumbers.  It  is  rep 
tile  and  sensual,  and  perhaps  cannot  be  wholly  expelled ; 
like  the  worms  which,  even  in  life  and  health,  occupy 
our  bodies.  Possibly  we  may  withdraw  from  it,  but 
never  change  its  nature.  I  fear  that  it  may  enjoy  a 
certain  health  of  its  own  ;  that  we  may  be  well,  yet  not 
pure.  The  other  day  I  picked  up  the  lower  jaw  of  a 
hog,  with  white  and  sound  teeth  and  tusks,  which  sug 
gested  that  there  was  an  animal  health  and  vigor  dis 
tinct  from  the  spiritual.  This  creature  succeeded  by 
other  means  than  temperance  and  purity.  "That  in 
which  men  differ  from  brute  beasts,"  says  Mencius,  "  is 
a  thing  very  inconsiderable  ;  the  common  herd  lose  it 
very  soon ;  superior  men  preserve  it  carefully."  Who 
knows  what  sort  of  life  would  result  if  we  had  attained 
to  purity  ?  If  I  knew  so  wise  a  man  as  could  teach  me 
purity  I  would  go  to  seek  him  forthwith.  "  A  com 
mand  over  our  passions,  and  over  the  external  senses 
of  the  body,  and  good  acts,  are  declared  by  the  Yed  to 
be  indispensable  in  the  mind's  approximation  to  God." 
Yet  the  spirit  can  for  the  time  pervade  and  control 
every  member  and  function  of  the  body,  and  transmute 
what  in  form  is  the  grossest  sensuality  into  purity  and 
devotion.  The  generative  energy,  which,  when  we  are 
loose,  dissipates  and  makes  us  unclean,  when  we  are  con 
tinent  invigorates  and  inspires  us.  Chastity  is  the  flow 
ering  of  man  ;  and  what  are  called  Genius,  Heroism, 
Holiness,  and  the  like,  are  but  various  fruits  which  suc 
ceed  it.  Man  flows  at  once  to  God  when  the  channel 
of  purity  is  open.  By  turns  our  purity  inspires  and 
our  impurity  casts  us  down.  He  is  blessed  who  is  as 
sured  that  the  animal  is  dying  out  in  him  day  by  day, 
and  the  divine  being  established.  Perhaps  there  is 


HIGHER    LAWS.  237 

none  but  has  cause  for  shame  on  account  of  the  inferior 
and  brutish  nature  to  which  he  is  allied.  I  fear  that 
we  are  such  gods  or  demigods  only  as  fauns  and  satyrs, 
the  divine  allied  to  beasts,  the  creatures  of  appetite,  and 
that,  to  some  extent,  our  very  life  is  our  disgrace.  — 

"  How  happy's  he  who  hath  due  place  assigned 
To  his  beasts  and  disaforested  his  mind  ! 

***** 
Can  use  his  horse,  goat,  wolf,  and  ev'ry  beast, 
And  is  not  ass  himself  to  all  the  rest ! 
Else  man  not  only  is  the  herd  of  swine, 
But  he's  those  devils  too  which  did  incline 
Them  to  a  headlong  rage,  and  made  them  worse.' 

All  sensuality  is  one,  though  it  takes  many  forms  ;  all 
purity  is  one.  It  is  the  same  whether  a  man  eat,  or 
drink,  or  cohabit,  or  sleep  sensually.  They  are  but  one 
appetite,  and  we  only  need  to  see  a  person  do  any  one 
of  these  things  to  know  how  great  a  sensualist  he  is. 
The  impure  can  neither  stand  nor  sit  with  purity.  When 
the  reptile  is  attacked  at  one  mouth  of  his  burrow,  he 
shows  himself  at  another.  If  you  would  be  chaste,  you 
must  be  temperate.  What  is  chastity  ?  How  shall  a 
man  know  if  he  is  chaste  ?  He  shall  not  know  it.  We 
have  heard  of  this  virtue,  but  we  know  not  what  it  is. 
We  speak  conformably  to  the  rumor  which  we  have 
heard.  From  exertion  come  wisdom  and  puVity ;  from 
sloth  ignorance  and  sensuality.  In  the  student  sensual 
ity  is  a  sluggish  habit  of  mind.  An  unclean  person  is 
universally  a  slothful  one,  one  who  sits  by  a  stove,  whom 
the  sun  shines  on  prostrate,  who  reposes  without  being 
fatigued.  If  you  would  avoid  uncleanness,  and  all  the 
sins,  work  earnestly,  though  it  be  at  cleaning  a  stable. 
Nature  is  hard  to  be  overcome,  but  she  must  be  over 


238  WALDEN. 

come.  What  avails  it  that  you  are  Christian,  if  you 
are  not  purer  than  the  heathen,  if  you  deny  yourself  no 
more,  if  you  are  not  more  religious  ?  I  know  of  many 
systems  of  religion  esteemed  heathenish  whose  precepts 
fill  the  reader  with  shame,  and  provoke  him  to  new  en 
deavors,  though  it  be  to  the  performance  of  rites  merely. 

I  hesitate  to  say  these  things,  but  it  is  not  because  of 
the  subject,  —  I  care  not  how  obscene  my  words  are,  — 
but  because  I  cannot  speak  of  them  without  betraying 
my  impurity.  We  discourse  freely  without  shame  of 
one  form  of  sensuality,  and  are  silent  about  another. 
We  are  so  degraded  that  we  cannot  speak  simply  of  the 
necessary  functions  of  human  nature.  In  earlier  ages, 
in  some  countries,  every  function  was  reverently  spoken 
of  and  regulated  by  law.  Nothing  was  too  trivial  for 
the  Hindoo  lawgiver,  however  offensive  it  may  be  to 
modern  taste.  He  teaches  how  to  eat,  drink,  cohabit, 
void  excrement  and  urine,  and  the  like,  elevating  what 
is  mean,  and  does  not  falsely  excuse  himself  by  calling 
these  things  trifles. 

Every  man  is  the  builder  of  a  temple,  called  his  body, 
to  the  god  he  worships,  after  a  style  purely  his  own,  nor 
can  he  get  off  by  hammering  marble  instead.  We  are 
all  sculptors  and  painters,  and  our  material  is  our  own 
flesh  and  blood  and  bones.  Any  nobleness  begins  at 
once  to  refine  a  man's  features,  any  meanness  or  sen 
suality  to  imbrute  them. 

John  Farmer  sat  at  his  door  one  September  evening, 
after  a  hard  day's  work,  his  mind  still  running  on  his 
labor  more  or  less.  Having  bathed  he  sat  down  to  rec 
reate  his  intellectual  man.  It  was  a  rather  cool  even 
ing,  and  some  of  his  neighbors  were  apprehending  a 
frost.  He  had  not  attended  to  the  train  of  his  thoughts 


HIGHER    LAWS.  239 

long  when  lie  heard  some  one  playing  on  a  flute,  and 
that  sound  harmonized  with  his  mood.  Still  he  thought 
of  his  work ;  but  the  burden  of  his  thought  was,  that 
though  this  kept  running  in  his  head,  and  he  found  him 
self  planning  and  contriving  it  against  his  will,  yet  it 
concerned  him  very  little.  It  was  no  more  than  the 
scurf  of  hi.1*  skin,  which  was  constantly  shuffled  off. 
But  the  notes  of  the  flute  came  home  to  his  ears  out  of 
a  different  sphere  from  that  he  worked  in,  and  suggested 
work  for  certain  faculties  which  slumbered  in  him. 
They  gently  did  away  with  the  street,  and  the  village, 
and  the  state  in  which  he  lived.  A  voice  said  to  him, 
—  Why  do  you  stay  here  and  live  this  mean  moiling 
life,  when  a  glorious  existence  is  possible  for  you? 
Those  same  stars  twinkle  over  other  fields  than  these.— 
But  how  to  come  out  of  this  condition  and  actually  mi 
grate  thither  ?  All  that  he  could  think  of  was  to  practise 
some  new  austerity,  to  let  his  mind  descend  into  his 
body  and  redeem  it,  and  treat  himself  with  ever  in 
creasing  respect. 


BRUTE    NEIGHBORS. 


SOMETIMES  I  had  a  companion  in  my  fishing,  who 
came  through  the  village  to  my  house  from  the  other 
Bide  of  thetown,  and  the  catching  of  the  dinner  was  as 
much  a  social  exercise  as  the  eating  of  it. 

Hermit.  I  wonder  what  the  world  is  doing  now.  I 
have  not  heard  so  much  as  a  locust  over  the  sweet-fern 
these  three  hours.  The  pigeons  are  all  asleep  upon 
their  roosts,  —  no  flutter  from  them.  Was  that  a  farm 
er's  noon  horn  which  sounded  from  beyond  the  woods 
just  now  ?  The  hands  are  coming  in  to  boiled  salt  beef 
and  cider  and  Indian  bread.  Why  will  men  worry 
themselves  so  ?  He  that  does  not  eat  need  not  work. 
I  wonder  how  much  they  have  reaped.  Who  would 
live  there  where  a  body  can  never  think  for  the  barking 
of  Bose  ?  And  0,  the  housekeeping !  to  keep  bright  tho 
devil's  door-knobs,  and  scour  his  tubs  this  bright  day ! 
Better  not  keep  a  house.  Say,  some  hollow  tree ;  and 
then  for  morning  calls  and  dinner-parties  !  Only  a  wood 
pecker  tapping.  O,  they  swarm  ;  the  sun  is  too  warm 
there ;  they  are  born  too  far  into  life  for  me.  I  have 
water  from  the  spring,  and  a  loaf  of  brown  bread  on  the 

(240) 


BRFTE    NEIGHBORS.  241 

shelf. — Hirk,  I  hear  a  rustling  >f  the  leaves.  Is  it 
some  ill-fed  village  bound  ;/ielding  to  the  instinct  of  the 
chase  ?  or  the  lost  pig  "w  hich  is  said  to  be  in  these 
woods,  whose  tracks  I  saw  after  the  rain  ?  It  comes  on 
apace  ;  my  sumachs  and  s\\  eet-briers  tremble.  —  Eh,  Mr. 
Poet,  is  it  you  ?  How  do  you  like  the  world  to-day  ? 

Poet.  See  those  clouds  ;  how  they  hang !  That's  the 
greatest  thing  I  have  seen  to-day.  There's  nothing  like 
it  in  old  paintings,  nothing  like  it  in  foreign  lands, — un 
less  when  we  were  off  the  coast  of  Spain.  That's  a  true 
Mediterranean  sky.  I  thought,  as  I  have  my  living  to 
get,  and  have  not  eaten  to-day,  that  I  might  go  a-fish- 
ing.  That's  the  true  industry  for  poets.  It  is  the  only 
trade  I  have  learned.  Come,  let's  along. 

Hermit.  I  cannot  resist.  My  brown  bread  will  soon 
be  gone.  I  will  go  with  you  gladly  soon,  but  I  am  just 
concluding  a  serious  meditation.  I  think  that  I  am 
near  the  end  of  it.  Leave  me  alone,  then,  for  a  while. 
But  that  we  may  not  be  delayed,  you  shall  be  digging 
the  bait  meanwhile.  Angle-worms  are  rarely  to  be  met 
with  in  these  parts,  where  the  soil  was  never  fattened 
with  manure ;  the  race  is  nearly  extinct.  The  sport  of 
digging  the  bait  is  nearly  equal  to  that  of  catching  the 
fish,  when  one's  appetite  is  not  too  keen ;  and  this  you 
may  have  all  to  yourself  to-day.  I  would  advise  you  to 
set  in  the  spade  down  yonder  among  the  ground-nuts, 
where  you  see  the  johnswort  waving.  I  think  that  I 
•nay  warrant  you  one  worm  to  every  three  sods  you 
turn  up,  if  you  look  well  in  among  the  roots  of  the 
grass,  as  if  you  were  weeding.  Or,  if  you  choose  to  go 
farther,  it  will  not  be  u'jwise,  for  I  have  found  the  in 
crease  of  fair  bait  to  t  j  very  nearly  as  the  squares  of 
the  d:  ta".ces. 

16 


2  WALDEN. 

Hermit  alone.  Let  me  see ;  where  was  I  ?  Me« 
thinks  I  was  nearly  in  this  frame  of  mind;  the  world 
lay  about  at  this  angle.  Shall  I  go  to  heaven  or  a-fish- 
ing  ?  If  I  should  soon  bring  this  meditation  to  an  end, 
•would  another  so  sweet  occasion  bo  likely  to  offer  ?  I 
was  as  near  being  resolved  into  the  essence  of  things  -is 
ever  I  was  in  my  life.  I  fear  my  thoughts  will  not 
conie  back  to  me.  If  it  would  do  any  good,  I  would 
whistle  for  them.  When  they  make  us  an  offer,  is  it 
wise  to  say,  We  will  think  of  it  ?  My  thoughts  have 
left  no  track,  and  I  cannot  find  the  path  again.  What 
was  it  that  I  was  thinking  of?  It  was  a  very  hazy  day. 
I  will  just  try  these  three  sentences  of  Con-fut-see; 
they  may  fetch  that  state  about  again.  I  know  not 
whether  it  was  the  dumps  or  a  budding  ecstasy.  Mem. 
There  never  is  but  one  opportunity  of  a  kind. 

Poet.  How  now,  Hermit,  is  it  too  soon  ?  I  have  got 
just  thirteen  whole  ones,  beside  several  which  are  im 
perfect  or  undersized ;  but  they  will  do  for  the  smaller 
fry ;  they  do  not  cover  up  the  hook  so  much.  Those 
village  worms  are  quite  too  large ;  a  shiner  may  make  a 
meal  off  one  without  finding  the  skewer. 

Hermit.  Well,  then,  let's  be  off.  Shall  we  to  the 
Concord  ?  There's  good  sport  there  if  the  water  be  not 
too  high. 


Why  do  precisely  these  objects  which  we  behold 
make  a  world?  Why  has  man  just  these  species  of  an 
imals  for  his  neighbors ;  as  if  nothing  but  a  mouse  could 
have  filled  this  crevice  ?  I  suspect  that  Pilpay  &  Co. 
have  put  animals  to  their  best  use,  for  they  are  all 
beasts  of  burden,  in  a  sense,  made  to  carry  some  por 
tion  of  our  thoughts. 


BRUTE   NEIGHBORS.  ^ 

The  mice  which  haunted  my  house  were  not  the  com 
mon  ones,  which  are  said  to  have  been  introduced  into 
the  country,  but  a  wild  native  kind  not  found  in  the  vil 
lage.  I  sent  one  to  a  distinguished  naturalist,  and  it  in 
terested  him  much.  When  I  was  building,  one  of  these 
had  its  nest  underneath  the  house,  ind  before  I  had  laid 
the  second  floor,  and  swept  out  the  shavings,  would 
come  out  regularly  at  lunch  time  and  pick  up  the 
crums  at  my  feet.  It  probably  had  never  seen  a  man 
before ;  and  it  soon  became  quite  familiar,  and  would 
run  over  my  shoes  and  up  my  clothes.  It  could  readily 
ascend  the  sides  of  the  room  by  short  impulses,  like  a 
squirrel,  which  it  resembled  in  its  motions.  At  length, 
as  I  leaned  with  my  elbow  on  the  bench  one  day,  it 
ran  up  iny  clothes,  and  along  my  sleeve,  and  round  and 
round  the  paper  which  held  my  dinner,  while  I  kept  the 
latter  close,  and  dodged  and  played  at  bo-peep  with  it ; 
and  when  at  last  I  held  still  a  piece  of  cheese  between 
my  thumb  and  finger,  it  came  and  nibbled  it,  sitting  in 
my  hand,  and  afterward  cleaned  its  face  and  paws,  like 
a  fly,  and  walked  away. 

A  phcebe  soon  built  in  my  shed,  and  a  robin  for  pro 
tection  in  a  pine  which  grew  against  the  house.  In 
June  the  partridge,  (Tetrao  umbellus,)  which  is  so  shy 
a  bird,  led  her  brood  past  my  windows,  from  the  woods 
in  the  rear  to  the  front  of  my  house,  clucking  and  call 
ing  to  them  like  a  hen,  and  in  all  her  behavior  proving 
herself  the  hen  of  the  woods.  The  young  suddenly  dis 
perse  on  your  approach,  at  a  signal  from  the  mother,  as 
if  a  whirlwind  had  swept  them  away,  and  they  so  exact 
ly  resemble  the  dried  leaves  and  twigs  that  many  a 
traveller  has  placed  his  foot  in  the  midst  of  a  brood,  and 
heard  the  whir  of  the  old  bird  as  she  flew  off,  and  h^r 


244  WALDEN. 

anxious  calls  and  mewing,  or  seen  her  trail  her  wings  tc 
attract  his  attention,  without  suspecting  their  neighbor 
hood.  The  parent  will  sometimes  roll  and  spin  round 
before  you  in  such  a  dishabille,  that  you  cannot,  for  a 
few  moments,  detect  what  kind  of  creature  it  is.  The 
young  squat  still  and  flat,  often  running  their  heads  un 
der  a  leaf,  and  mind  only  their  mother's  directions  given 
from  a  distance,  nor  will  your  approach  make  them  run 
again  and  betray  themselves.  You  may  even  tread  on 
them,  or  have  your  eyes  on  them  for  a  minute,  without 
discovering  them.  I  have  held  them  in  my  open  hand 
at  such  a  time,  and  still  their  only  care,  obedient  to  their 
mother  and  their  instinct,  was  to  squat  there  without 
fear  or  trembling.  So  perfect  is  this  instinct,  that  once, 
when  I  had  laid  them  on  the  leaves  again,  and  one  acci 
dentally  fell  on  its  side,  it  was  found  with  the  rest  in 
exactly  the  same  position  ten  minutes  afterward.  They 
are  not  callow  like  the  young  of  most  birds,  but  more 
perfectly  developed  and  precocious  even  than  chickens. 
The  remarkably  adult  yet  innocent  expression  of  their 
open  and  serene  eyes  is  very  memorable.  All  intelli 
gence  seems  reflected  in  them.  They  suggest  not  mere 
ly  the  purity  of  infancy,  but  a  wisdom  clarified  by  expe 
rience.  Such  an  eye  was  not  born  when  the  bird  was, 
but  is  coeval  with  the  sky  it  reflects.  The  woods  do 
not  yield  another  such  a  gem.  The  traveller  does  n3t 
often  look  into  such  a  limpid  well.  The  ignorant  or 
reckless  sportsman  often  shoots  the  parent  at  such  a 
time,  and  leaves  these  innocents  to  fall  a  prey  to  some 
prowling  beast  or  bird,  or  gradually  mingle  with  the  de 
caying  leaves  which  they  so  much  resemble.  It  is  said 
that  when  hatched  by  a  hen  they  will  directly  disperse 
on  some  alarm,  and  so  are  lo?t,  for  they  never  hear  the 


BRUTE    NEIGHBORS.  215 

mother's  call  which  gathers  them  again.     These  were 
my  hens  and  chickens. 

It  is  remarkable  how  many  creatures  live  wild  and 
free  though  secret  in  the  woods,  and  still  sustain  them 
selves  in  the  neighborhood  of  towns,  suspected  by  hunt 
ers  only.  How  retired  the  otter  manages  to  live  here  1 
He  grows  to  be  four  feet  long,  as  big  as  a  small  boy, 
perhaps  without  any  human  being  getting  a  glimpse  of 
him.  I  formerly  saw  the  raccoon  in  the  woods  behind 
where  my  house  is  built,  and  probably  still  heard  their 
whinnering  at  night.  Commonly  I  rested  an  hour  or 
two  in  the  shade  at  noon,  after  planting,  and  ate  my 
lunch,  and  read  a  little  by  a  spring  which  was  the  source 
of  a  swamp  and  of  a  brook,  oozing  from  under  Brister's 
Hill,  half  a  mile  from  my  field.  The  approach  to  this 
was  through  a  succession  of  descending  grassy  hollows, 
full  of  young  pitch-pines,  into  a  larger  wood  about  the 
swamp.  There,  in  a  very  secluded  and  shaded  spot, 
under  a  spreading  white-pine,  there  was  yet  a  clean  firm 
sward  to  sit  on.  I  had  dug  out  the  spring  and  made  a 
well  of  clear  gray  water,  where  I  could  dip  up  a  pailful 
without  roiling  it,  and  thither  I  went  for  this  purpose 
almost  every  day  in  midsummer,  when  the  pond  was 
warmest.  Thither  too  the  wood-cock  led  her  brood,  to 
probe  the  mud  for  worms,  flying  but  a  foot  above  them 
down  the  bank,  while  they  ran  in  a  troop  beneath ;  but 
at  last,  spying  me,  she  would  leave  her  young  and  circle 
round  and  round  me,  nearer  and  nearer  till  within  four 
or  five  feet,  pretending  broken  wings  and  legs,  to  attract 
my  attention,  and  get  off  her  young,  who  would  already 
have  taken  up  then"  march,  with  faint  wiry  peep,  single 
file  through  tha  swamp,  as  she  directed.  Or  I  heard 
the  peep  of  the  young  when  I  could  not  see  the  parent 


246  WALDEN. 

bird.  There  too  the  turtle-doves  sat  over  the  spring,  or 
fluttered  from  bough  to  bough  of  the  soft  white-pines 
over  my  head ;  or  the  red  squirrel,  coursing  down  the 
nearest  bough,  was  particularly  familiar  and  inquisitive. 
You  only  need  sit  still  long  enough  in  some  attractive 
spot  in  the  woods  that  all  its  inhabitants  may  exhibit 
themselves  to  you  by  turns. 

I  was  witness  to  events  of  a  less  peaceful  charactt  r. 
One  day  when  I  went  out  to  my  wood-pile,  or  rather 
my  pile  of  stumps,  I  observed  two  large  ants,  the  one 
red,  the  other  much  larger,  nearly  half  an  inch  long,  and 
black,  fiercely  contending  with  one  another.  Having 
once  got  hold  they  never  let  go,  but  struggled  and 
wrestled  and  rolled  on  the  chips  incessantly.  Looking 
farther,  I  was  surprised  to  find  that  the  chips  were  cov 
ered  with  such  combatants,  that  it  was  not  a  duellum, 
but  a  bellum,  a  war  between  two  races  of  ants,  the  red 
always  pitted  against  the  black,  and  frequently  two  red 
ones  to  one  black.  The  legions  of.  these  Myrmidons 
covered  all  the  hills  and  vales  in  my  wood-yard,  and 
the  ground  was  already  strewn  with  the  dead  and  dying, 
both  red  and  black.  It  was  the  only  battle  which  I 
have  ever  witnessed,  the  only  battle-field  I  ever  trod 
while  the  battle  was  raging ;  internecine  war ;  the  red 
republicans  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  black  imperialists 
on  the  other.  On  every  side  they  were  engaged  in 
deadly  combat,  yet  without  any  noise  that  I  could  hear, 
and  human  soldiers  never  fought  so  resolutely.  I 
watched  a  couple  that  were  fast  locked  in  each  other's 
embraces,  in  a  little  sunny  valley  amid  the  chips,  now  at 
noon-day  prepared  to  fight  till  the  sun  went  down,  of 
life  went  out.  The  smaller  red  champion  had  fastened 
himself  like  a  vice  to  his  adversary's  front,  and  through 


BRUTE    NEIGHBORS.  217 

all  the  tumblings  on  that  field  never  for  an  instant 
cea  ed  to  gnaw  at  one  of  his  feelers  near  the  root,  hav 
ing  already  caused  the  other  to  go  by  the  board ;  while 
the  stronger  black  one  dashed  him  from  side  to  side, 
anr1,  as  I  saw  on  looking  nearer,  had  already  divested 
him  of  several  of  his  members.  They  fought  with  more 
pertinacity  than  bull-dogs.  Neither  manifested  the 
least  disposition  to  retreat.  It  was  evident  that  their 
battle-cry  was  Conquer  or  die.  In  the  mean  while 
there  came  along  a  single  red  ant  on  the  hill-side  of  this 
valley,  evidently  full  of  excitement,  who  either  had  de 
spatched  his  foe,  or  had  not  yet  taken  part  in  the  battle ; 
probably  the  latter,  for  he  had  lost  none  of  his  limbs ; 
whose  mother  had  charged  him  to  return  with  his  shield 
or  upon  it.  Or  perchance  he  was  some  Achilles,  who 
had  nourished  his  wrath  apart,  and  had  now  come  to 
avenge  or  rescue  his  Patroclus.  He  saw  this  unequal 
combat  from  afar, — for  the  blacks  were  nearly  twice 
the  size  of  the  red, — he  drew  near  with  rapid  pace  till 
he  stood  on  his  guard  within  half  an  inch  of  the  com 
batants  ;  then,  watching  his  opportunity,  he  sprang  upon 
the  black  warrior,  and  commenced  his  operations  near 
the  root  of  his  right  fore-leg,  leaving  the  foe  to  select 
among  his  own  members ;  and  so  there  were  three  unit 
ed  for  life,  as  if  a  new  kind  of  attraction  had  been  in 
vented  which  put  all  other  locks  and  cements  to  shame. 
I  should  not  have  wondered  by  this  time  to  find  that 
they  had  their  respective  musical  bands  stationed  on 
some  eminent  chip,  and  playing  their  national  airs  the 
while,  to  excite  the  slow  and  cheer  the  dying  combat 
ants.  I  was  myself  excited  somewhat  even  as  if  they 
had  been  men.  The  more  you  think  of  it,  the  less  the 
litference.  And  certainly  there  is  not  the  fight  recorder! 


248  WALDEN. 

in  Concord  history,  at  least,  if  in  the  history  of  America, 
that  will  bear  a  moment's  comparison  with  this,  whether 
for  the  numbers  engaged  in  it,  or  for  the  patriotism 
and  heroism  displayed.  For  numbers  and  for  carnage 
it  was  an  Austerlitz  or  Dresden.  Concord  Fight !  Two 
killed  on  the  patriots'  side,  and  Luther  Blanchard 
wounded!  Why  here  every  ant  was  a  Buttrick, — 
"Fire!  for  God's  sake  fire!" — and  thousands  shared 
the  fate  of  Davis  and  Hosmer.  There  was  not  one 
hireling  there.  I  have  no  doubt  that  it  was  a  principle 
they  fought  for,  as  much  as  our  ancestors,  and  not  to 
avoid  a  three-penny  tax  on  their  tea ;  and  the  results  of 
this  battle  will  be  as  important  and  memorable  to  those 
whom  it  concerns  as  those  of  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill, 
at  least. 

I  took  up  the  chip  on  which  the  three  I  have  particu 
larly  described  were  struggling,  carried  it  into  my  house, 
and  placed  it  under  a  tumbler  on  my  window-sill,  in  or 
der  to  see  the  issue.  Holding  a  microscope  to  the  first- 
mentioned  red  ant,  I  saw  that,  though  he  was  assiduous 
ly  gnawing  at  the  near  fore-leg  of  his  enemy,  having 
severed  his  remaining  feeler,  his  own  breast  was  all 
torn  away,  exposing  what  vitals  he  had  there  to  the 
jaws  of  the  black  warrior,  whose  breast-plate  was  appar 
ently  too  thick  for  him  to  pierce ;  and  the  dark  carbun 
cles  of  the.  sufferer's  eyes  shone  with  ferocity  such  as 
war  only  could  excite.  They  struggled  half  an  hour 
longer  under  the  tumbler,  and  when  I  looked  again  the 
black  soldier  had  severed  the  heads  of  his  foes  from 
their  bodies,  and  the  still  living  heads  were  hanging  on 
either  side  of  him  like  ghastly  trophies  at  his  saddle 
bow,  still  apparently  as  firmly  fastened  as  ever,  and  he 
wan  endeavoring  with  feeble  struggles,  being  without 


BRUTE   NEIGHBORS.  249 

feeleis  and  with  only  the  remnant  of  a  leg,  and  I  know 
not  how  many  other  wounds,  to  divest  himself  of  them ; 
which  at  length,  after  half  an  hour  more,  he  accom 
plished.  I  raised  the  glass,  and  he  went  off  over  the 
window-sill  in  that  crippled  state.  Whether  he  finally 
survived  that  combat,  and  spent  the  remainder  of  his 
days  in  some  Hotel  des  Invalides,  I  do  not  know ;  but  I 
thought  that  his  industry  would  not  be  worth  much 
thereafter.  I  never  learned  which  party  was  victorious, 
nor  the  cause  of  the  war  ;  but  I  felt  for  the  rest  of  that 
day  as  if  I  had  had  my  feelings  excited  and  harrowed 
by  witnessing  the  struggle,  the  ferocity  and  carnage,  of  a 
human  battle  before  my  door. 

Kirby  and  Spence  tell  us  that  the  battles  of  ants  have 
long  been  celebrated  and  the  date  of  them  recorded, 
though  they  say  that  Huber  is  the  only  modern  author 
who  appears  to  have  witnessed  them.  "  JEneas  Syl 
vius,"  say  they,  "  after  giving  a  very  circumstantial  ac 
count  of  one  contested  with  great  obstinacy  by  a  great 
and  small  species  on  the  trunk  of  a  pear  tree,"  adds  that 
"  *  This  action  was  fought  in  the  pontificate  of  Eugenius 
the  Fourth,  in  the  presence  of  Nicholas  Pistoriensis,  an 
eminent  lawyer,  who  related  the  whole  history  of  the  bat- 
lie  with  the  greatest  fidelity.'  A  similar  engagement 
between  great  and  small  ants  is  recorded  by  Olaus  Mag 
nus,  in  which  the  small  ones,  being  victorious,  are  said  to 
have  buried  the  bodies  of  their  own  soldiers,  but  lef*  those 
of  their  giant  enemies  a  prey  to  the  birds.  This  ^vent 
happened  previous  to  the  expulsion  of  the  tyrant  Chris- 
tiern  the  Second  from  Sweden."  The  battle  which  I  wit- 
nessed  took  place  in  the  Presidency  of  Polk,  five  years 
before  the  passage  of  Webster's  Fugitive-Slave  Bill. 

Many  a  village  Bose,  fit  only  to  course  a  mud-turtle 


250  WALDEIST. 

in  a  victualling  cellar,  sported  his  heavy  q  larters  in  the 
woods,  without  the  knowledge  of  his  master,  and  inef- 
fec.ually  smelled  at  old  fox  burrows  and  woodchucks' 
holes ;  led  perchance  by  some  slight  cur  which  nimbly 
threaded  the  wood,  and  might  still  inspire  a  natural  ter 
ror  in  its  denizens  ;  —  now  far  behind  his  guide,  bark 
ing  like  a  canine  bull  toward  some  small  squirrel  which 
had  treed  itself  for  scrutiny,  then,  cantering  off,  bending 
the  bushes  with  his  weight,  imagining  that  he  is  on  the 
track  of  some  stray  member  of  the  jerb.illa  family. 
Once  I  was  surprised  to  see  a  cat  walking  along  the 
stony  shore  of  the  pond,  for  they  rarely  wander  so  far 
from  home.  The  surprise  was  mutual.  Nevertheless 
the  most  domestic  cat,  which  has  lain  on  a  rug  all  her 
days,  appears  quite  at  home  in  the  woods,  and,  by  her 
sly  and  stealthy  behavior,  proves  herself  more  native 
there  than  the  regular  inhabitants.  Once,  when  berry 
ing,  I  met  with  a  cat  with  young  kittens  in  the  woods, 
quite  wild,  and  they  all,  like  their  mother,  had  their 
backs  up  and  were  fiercely  spitting  at  me.  A  few 
years  before  I  lived  in  the  woods  there  was  what  was 
called  a  "  winged  cat "  in  one  of  the  farm-houses  in 
Lincoln  nearest  the  pond,  Mr.  G-ilian  Baker's.  When 
I  called  to  see  her  in  June,  1842,  she  was  gone  a-hunt- 
ing  in  the  woods,  as  was  her  wont,  (I  am  not  sure 
whether  it  was  a  male  or  female,  and  so  use  the  more 
common  pronoun,)  but  her  mistress  told  me  that  she 
came  into  the  neighborhood  a  little  more  than  a  year 
before,  in  April,  and  was  finally  ^aken  into  their  house  , 
that  she  was  of  a  dark  brownish-gray  color,  with  a 
white  spot  on  her  throat,  and  white  feet,  and  had  a  large 
bushy  tail  like  a  fox  ;  that  in  the  winter  the  fur  grew 
thick  ai  d  Hatted  out  along  her  sides,  forming  strips  ten 


BTIUTE    NEIGHBORS.  251 

or  twelve  inches  long  by  two  and  a  half  wide,  and  under 
her  chin  like  a  muff,  the  upper  side  loose,  the  under 
matted  like  felt,  and  in  the  spring  these  appendages 
dropped  off.  They  gave  me  a  pair  of  her  "  wings," 
which  I  keep  still.  There  is  no  appearance  of  a  mem 
brane  about  them.  Some  thought  it  was  part  flying- 
squirrel  or  some  other  wild  animal,  which  is  not  impos 
sible,  for,  according  to  naturalists,  prolific  hybrids  have 
been  produced  by  the  union  of  the  marten  and  domes 
tic  cat.  This  would  have  been  the  right  kind  of  cat  for 
me  to  keep,  if  I  had  kept  any ;  for  why  should  not  a 
poet's  cat  be  winged  as  well  as  his  horse  ? 

In  the  fall  the  loon  (Colymbus  glacialis)  came,  as 
usual,  to  moult  and  bathe  in  the  pond,  making  the 
woods  ring  with  his  wild  laughter  before  I  had  risen. 
At  rumor  of  his  arrival  all  the  Mill-dam  sportsmen  are 
on  the  alert,  in  gigs  and  on  foot,  two  by  two  and  three 
by  three,  with  patent  rifles  and  conical  balls  and  spy 
glasses.  They  come  rustling  through  the  woods  like 
autumn  leaves,  at  least  ten  men  to  one  loon.  Some 
station  themselves  on  this  side  of  the  pond,  some  on  thatj 
for  the  poor  bird  cannot  be  omnipresent ;  if  he  dive  here 
he  must  come  up  there.  But  now  the  kind  October 
wind  rises,  rustling  the  leaves  and  rippling  the  surface 
of  the  water,  so  that  no  loon  can  be  heard  or  seen, 
though  his  foes  sweep  the  pond  with  spy-glasses,  and 
make  the  woods  resound  with  their  discharges.  The 
waves  generously  rise  and  dash  angrily,  taking  sides 
with  all  waterfowl,  and  our  sportsmen  must  beat  a  re 
treat  to  town  and  shop  and  unfinished  jobs.  But  they 
were  too  often  successful.  When  I  went  to  get  a  pail 
of  water  early  in  the  morning  I  frequently  saw  thig 
stately  bird  sailing  out  of  my  cove  within  a  few  rods, 


252  WALDEN. 

4 

If  I  endeavored  to  overtake  him  in  a  boat,  in  order  te 
Bee  how  he  would  manoeuvre,  he  would  dive  and  be 
completely  lost,  so  that  I  did  not  discover  him  again, 
sometimes,  till  the  latter  part  of  the  day.  But  I  was 
more  than  a  match  for  him  on  the  surface.  He  corn  - 
monly  went  off  in  a  rain. 

As  I  was  paddling  along  the  north  shore  one  very 
calm  October  afternoon,  for  such  days  especially  thej 
settle  on  to  the  lakes,  like  the  milkweed  down,  having 
looked  in  vain  over  the  pond  for  a  loon,  suddenly  one, 
sailing  out  from  the  shore  toward  the  middle  a  few  rods 
in  front  of  me,  set  up  his  wild  laugh  and  betrayed  him 
self.  I  pursued  with  a  paddle  and  he  dived,  but  when 
he  came  up  I  was  nearer  than  before.  He  dived  again, 
but  I  miscalculated  the  direction  he  would  take,  and  we 
were  fifty  rods  apart  when  he  came  to  the  surface  this 
time,  for  I  had  helped  to  widen  the  interval ;  and  again 
he  laughed  long  and  loud,  and  with  more  reason  than 
before.  He  manoeuvred  so  cunningly  that  I  could  not 
get  within  half  a  dozen  rods  of  him.  Each  time,  when 
he  came  to  the  surface,  turning  his  head  this  way  and 
that,  he  coolly  surveyed  the  water  atnd  the  land,  and  ap 
parently  chose  his  course  so  that  he  might  come  up 
where  there  was  the  widest  expanse  of  water  and  at 
the  greatest  distance  from  the  boat.  It  was  surprising 
how  quickly  he  made  up  his  mind  and  put  his  resolve 
into  execution.  He  led  me  at  once  to  the  widest  part 
of  the  pond,  and  could  not  be  driven  from  it.  While  he 
was  thinking  one  thing  in  his  brain,  I  was  endeavoring 
to  divine  his  thought  in  mine.  It  was  a  pretty  game, 
played  on  the  smooth  surface  of  the  pond,  a  man  against 
a  loon.  Suddenly  your  adversary's  checker  disappears 
beneath  the  board,  and  the  problem  is  to  place  yours 


BRUTE    NEIGHBORS.  2r»3 

nearest  to  where  his  will  appear  again.  Sometimes  he 
would  come  up  unexpectedly  on  the  opposite  side  of  me, 
having  apparently  passed  directly  under  the  boat.  So 
long-winded  was  he  and  so  unweariable,  that  when  he 
had  swum  farthest  he  would  immediately  plunge  again, 
nevertheless  ;  and  then  no  wit  could  divine  where  in  the 
deep  pond,  beneath  the  smooth  surface,  he  might  be 
speeding  his  way  like  a  fish,  for  he  had  time  and  ability 
to  visit  the  bottom  of  the  pond  in  its  deepest  part.  It 
is  said  that  loons  have  been  caught  in  the  New  York 
lakes  eighty  feet  beneath  the  surface,  with  hooks  set  for 
trout,  —  though  Walden  is  deeper  than  that.  How  sur 
prised  must  the  fishes  be  to  see  this  ungainly  visitor  from 
another  sphere  speeding  his  way  amid  their  schools ! 
Yet  he  appeared  to  know  his  course  as  surely  under 
water  as  on  the  surface,  and  swam  much  faster  there. 
Once  or  twice  I  saw  a  ripple  where  he  approached  the 
surface,  just  put  his  head  out  to  reconnoitre,  and  instant 
ly  dived  again.  I  found  that  it  was  as  well  for  me  to 
rest  on  my  oars  and  wait  his  reappearing  as  to  endeavor 
to  calculate  where  he  would  rise  ;  for  again  and  again, 
when  I  was  straining  my  eyes  over  the  surface  one 
way,  I  would  suddenly  be  startled  by  his  unearthly 
laugh  behind  me.  But  why,  after  displaying  so  much 
cunning,  did  he  invariably  betray  himself  the  moment 
he  came  up  by  that  loud  laugh  ?  Did  not  his  white 
breast  enough  betray  him  ?  He  was  indeed  a  silly  loon, 
I  thought.  I  could  commonly  hear  the  plash  of  the 
water  when  he  came  up,  and  so  also  detected  him.  But 
after  an  hour  he  seemed  as  fresh  as  ever,  dived  as 
willingly  and  swam  yet  farther  than  at  first.  If  waa 
surprising  to  see  how  serenely  he  sailed  ofF  with  unruf« 


254  WALDEN. 

fled  breast  when  he  came  to  the  surface,  doing  all  the 
work  with  his  webbed  feet  beneath.  His  usual  note 
was  this  demoniac  laughter,  yet  somewhat  like  that  of  a 
water-fowl ;  but  occasionally,  when  he  had  balked  me 
most  successfully  and  come  up  a  long  way  off,  he  uttered 
a  long-drawn  unearthly  howl,  probably  more  like  that  of 
a  wolf  than  any  bird ;  as  when  a  beast  puts  his  muzzle 
to  the  ground  and  deliberately  howls.  This  was  his 
looning,  —  perhaps  the  wildest  sound  that  is  ever  heard 
here,  making  the  woods  ring  far  and  wide.  I  con 
cluded  that  he  laughed  in  derision  of  my  efforts,  confi 
dent  of  his  own  resources.  Though  the  sky  was  by  this 
time  overcast,  the  pond  was  so  smooth  that  I  could  see 
where  he  broke  the  surface  when  I  did  not  hear  him. 
His  white  breast,  the  stillness  of  the  air,  and  the  smooth 
ness  of  the  water  were  all  against  him.  At  length, 
having  come  up  fifty  rods  off,  he  uttered  one  of  those 
prolonged  howls,  as  if  calling  on  the  god  of  loons  to  aid 
him,  and  immediately  there  came  a  wind  from  the  east 
and  rippled  the  surface,  and  filled  the  whole  air  with 
misty  rain,  and  I  was  impressed  as  if  it  were  the  prayer 
of  the  loon  answered,  and  his  god. was  angry  with  me; 
and  so  I  left  him  disappearing  far  away  on  the  tumultu 
ous  surface. 

For  hours,  in  fall  days,  I  watched  the  ducks  cunning 
ly  tack  and  veer  and  hold  the  middle  of  the  pond,  far 
from  the  sportsman ;  tricks  which  they  will  have  less 
need  to  practise  in  Louisiana  bayous.  When  compelled 
to  rise  they  would  sometimes  circle  round  and  round 
and  over  the  pond  at  a  considerable  height,  from  which 
they  could  easily  see  to  other  ponds  and  the  river, 
like  black  motes  in  the  sky ;  and,  when  I  thought  they 


BRUTE    NEIGHBORS.  255 

had  gone  off  thither  long  since,  they  would  settle  down 
by  a  slanting  flight  of  a  quarter  of  a  mile  on  to  a  dis 
tant  part  which  was  left  free  ;  but  what  beside  safety 
they  got  by  sailing  in  the  middle  of  Walden  I  do  not 
know,  unless  they  love  its  water  for  the  same  reasoo 
that  I  do. 


HOUSE-WARMING. 


IN  October  I  went  a-graping  to  the  river  meadowa, 
and  loaded  myself  with  clusters  more  precious  for  their 
beauty  and  fragrance  than  for  food.  There  too  I  ad 
mired,  though  I  did  not  gather,  the  cranberries,  small 
waxen  gems,  pendants  of  the  meadow  grass,  pearly  and 
red,  which  the  farmer  plucks  with  an  ugly  rake,  leaving 
the  smooth  meadow  in  a  snarl,  heedlessly  measuring 
them  by  the  bushel  and  the  dollar  only,  and  sells  the 
spoils  of  the  meads  to  Boston  and  New  York ;  destined 
to  be  jammed,  to  satisfy  the  tastes  of  lovers  of  Na 
ture  there.  So  butchers  rake  the  tongues  of  bison  out 
of  the  prairie  grass,  regardless  of  the  torn  and  droop 
ing  plant.  The  barberry's  brilliant  fruit  was  likewise 
food  for  my  eyes  merely ;  but  I  collected  a  small  store 
of  wild  apples  for  coddling,  which  the  proprietor  and 
travellers  had  overlooked.  When  chestnuts  were  ripe 
I  laid  up  half  a  bushel  for  winter.  It  was  very  ex 
citing  at  that  season  to  roam  the  then  boundless  chest 
nut  woods  of  Lincoln,  —  they  now  sleep  their  long  sleep 
under  the  railroad,  —  with  a  bag  on  my  shoulder,  and  a 
stick  to  open  burrs  with  in  my  hand,  for  I  did  not  always 

(2oG) 


HOUSE-WARMING.  257 

wait  for  the  frost,  amid  the  rustling  of  leaves  and  the 
loud  reproofs  of  the  red-squirrels  and  the  jays,  whose 
half-consumed  nuts  I  sometimes  stole,  for  the  burrs  which 
they  had  selected  were  sure  to  contain  sound  ones. 
Occasionally  I  climbed  and  shook  the  trees.  They 
grew  also  behind  my  house,  and  one  large  tree  which 
almost  overshadowed  it,  was,  when  in  flower,  a  bouquet 
which  scented  the  whole  neighborhood,  but  the  squirrels 
and  the  jays  got  most  of  its  fruit ;  the  last  coming  in 
flocks  early  in  the  morning  and  picking  the  nuts  out  of 
the  burrs  before  they  fell.  I  relinquished  these  trees  to 
them  and  visited  the  more  distant  woods  composed 
wholly  of  chestnut.  These  nuts,  a§  far  as  they  went, 
were  a  good  substitute  for  bread.  Many  other  substi 
tutes  might,  perhaps,  be  found.  Digging  one  day  for 
fish-worms  I  discovered  the  groundr-nut  (Apios  tube- 
rosd)  on  its  string,  the  potato  of  the  aborigines,  a  sort 
of  fabulous  fruit,  which  I  had  begun  to  doubt  if  I  had 
ever  dug  and  eaten  in  childhood,  as  I  had  told,  and  had 
not  dreamed  it.  I  had  often  since  seen  its  crimpled  red 
velvety  blossom  supported  by  the  stems  of  other  plants 
without  knowing  it  to  be  the  same.  Cultivation  has  well 
nigh  exterminated  it.  It  has  a  sweetish  taste,  much 
like  that  of  a  frostbitten  potato,  and  I  found  it  better 
boiled  than  roasted.  This  tuber  seemed  like  a  faint 
promise  of  Nature  to  rear  her  own  children  and  feed 
them  simply  here  at  some  future  period.  In  these  days 
of  fatted  cattle  and  waving  grain -fields,  this  humble 
root,  which  was  once  the  totem  of  an  Indian  tribe,  is 
quite  forgotten,  or  known  only  by  its  flowering  vine ; 
but  let  wild  Nature  reign  here  once  more,  and  the  ten 
der  and  luxurious  English  grains  will  probably  disap 
pear  before  a  myriad  of  foes,  and  without  the  care  of 
17 


?58  WALDEN. 

raan  the  crow  may  carry  back  even  the  last  seed  cf 
corn  to  the  great  corn-field  of  the  Indian's  God  in  the 
south- west,  whence  he  is  said  to  have  brought  it;  but 
the  now  almost  exterminated  ground-nut  will  perhaps 
revive  and  nourish  in  spite  of  frosts  and  wildness,  prove 
itself  indigenous,  and  resume  its  ancient  importance 
and  dignity  as  the  diet  of  the  hunter  tribe.  Some  In 
dian  Ceres  or  Minerva  must  have  been  the  inventor  and 
bestower  of  it ;  and  when  the  reign  of  poetry  com 
mences  here,  its  leaves  and  string  of  nuts  may  be  repre 
sented  on  our  works  of  art. 

Already,  by  the  first  of  September,  I  had  seen  two 
or  three  small  maples  turned  scarlet  across  the  pond, 
beneath  where  the  white  stems  of  three  aspens  di 
verged,  at  the  point  of  a  promontory,  next  the  water. 
Ah,  many  a  tale  their  color  told  !  And  gradually  from 
week  to  week  the  character  of  each  tree  came  out,  and 
it  admired  itself  reflected  in  the  smooth  mirror  of  the 
lake.  Each  morning  the  manager  of  this  gallery  sub 
stituted  some  new  picture,  distinguished  by  more  bril 
liant  or  harmonious  coloring,  for  the  old  upon  the  walls. 

The  wasps  came  by  thousands  to  my  lodge  in  Octo 
ber,  as  to  winter  quarters,  and  settled  on  my  windows 
within  and  on  the  walls  over-head,  sometimes  deterring 
visitors  from  entering.  Each  morning,  when  they  were 
numbed  with  cold,  I  swept  some  of  them  out,  but  I  did 
not  trouble  myself  much  to  get  rid  of  them ;  I  even  felt 
complimented  by  their  regarding  my  house  as  a  desira 
ble  shelter.  They  never  molested  me  seriously,  though 
they  bedded  with  me ;  and  they  gradually  disappeared, 
into  what  crevices  I  do  not  know,  avoiding  winter  and 
«*nspeakable  cold. 

Like  the   wasps,  before  I  finally  went  into  winter 


HOUSE-WARMING.  259 

quarters  in  November,  I  used  to  resort  to  the  north-  east 
side  of  Walden,"  which  the  sun,  reflected  from  the  pitch- 
pine  woods  and  the  stony  shore,  made  the  fire-side  of 
the  pond  ;  it  is  so  much  pleasanter  and  wholesomer  to  be 
warmed  by  the  sun  while  you  can  be,  than  by  an  artifi 
cial  fire.  I  thus  warmed  myself  by  the  still  glowing 
embers  which  the  summer,  like  a  departed  hunter, 
had  left. 


When  I  came  to  build  my  chimney  I  studied  masonry 
My  bricks  being  second-hand  ones  required  to  be 
cleaned  with  a  trowel,  so  that  I  learned  more  than 
usual  of  the  qualities  of  bricks  and  trowels.  The  mor 
tar  on  them  was  fifty  years  old,  and  was  said  to  be  still 
growing  harder  ;  but  this  is  one  of  those  sayings  which 
men  love  to  repeat  whether  they  are  true  or  not.  Such 
sayings  themselves  grow  harder  and  adhere  more  firmly 
with  age,  and  it  would  take  many  blows  with  a  trowel 
to  clean  an  old  wiseacre  of  them.  Many  of  the  villages 
of  Mesopotamia  are  built  of  second-hand  bricks  of  a 
very  good  quality,  obtained  from  the  ruins  of  Babylon, 
and  the  cement  on  them  is  older  and  probably  harder 
still.  However  that  may  be,  I  was  struck  by  the  pecu 
liar  toughness  of  the  steel  which  bore  so  many  violent 
blows  without  being  worn  out.  As  my  bricks  had  been 
in  a  chimney  before,  though  I  did  not  read  the  name  of 
Nebuchadnezzar  on  them,  I  picked  out  as  many  fire 
place  bricks  as  I  could  find,  to  save  work  and  waste,  and 
I  filled  the  spaces  between  the  bricks  about  the  fire 
place  with  stones  from  the  pond  shore,  and  also  made 
my  mortar  with  the  white  sand  from  the  same  place.  I 
lingered  most  about  the  fireplace,  as  the  roost  vital  p?»rt 


260  WALDEN. 

of  the  house.  Indeed,  I  worked  so  deliberately,  iliat 
though  I  commenced  at  the  ground  in  the  morning,  a 
course  of*  bricks  raised  a  few  inches  above  the  flooi1 
served  for  my  pillow  at  night ;  yet  I  did  not  get  a  stiiF 
neck  for  it  that  I  remember ;  my  stiff  neck  is  of  older 
date.  I  took  a  poet  to  board  for  a  fortnight  about  those 
times,  which  caused  me  to  be  put  to  it  for  room.  He 
brought  his  own  knife,  though  I  had  two,  and  we  used 
to  scour  them  by  thrusting  them  into  the  earth.  He 
shared  with  me  the  labors  of  cooking.  I  was  pleased 
to  see  my  work  rising  so  square  and  solid  by  degrees, 
and  reflected,  that,  if  it  proceeded  slowly,  it  was  calcu 
lated  to  endure  a  long  time.  The  chimney  is  to  some 
extent  an  independent  structure,  standing  on  the  ground 
and  rising  through  the  house  to  the  heavens  ;  even 
after  the  house  is  burned  it  still  stands  sometimes,  and 
its  importance  and  independence  are  apparent.  Thui 
was  toward  the  end  of  summer.  It  was  now  November. 


The  north  wind  had  already  begun  to  cool  the  pond, 
though  it  took  many  weeks  of  steady  blowing  to  accom 
plish  it,  it  is  so  deep.  When  I  began  to  have  a  fire  at 
evening,  before  I  plastered  my  house,  the  chimney  carried 
smoke  particularly  well,  because  of  the  numerous  chinks 
between  the  boards.  Yet  I  passed  some  cheerful  even 
ings  in  that  cool  and  airy  apartment,  surrounded  by 
the  rough  brown  boards  full  of  knots,  and  raiiers  with 
the  bark  on  high  over-head.  My  house  nevtr  pleased 
my  eye  so  much  after  it  was  plastered,  though  I  was 
obliged  to  confess  that  it  was  more  comfortable.  Should 
not  every  apartment  in  which  man  dwells  be  lofty 
enough  to  create  some  obscurity  over-head, 


HOLSE- WARMING.  261 

ering  shadows  may  play  at  evening  about  the  rafters  ? 
These  forms  are  more  agreeable  to  the  fancy  and 'imagi 
nation  than  fresco  paintings  or  other  the  most  expen 
sive  furniture.  I  now  first  began  to  inhabit  my  house, 
I  may  say,  when  I  began  to  use  it  for  warmth  as 
well  as  shelter.  I  had  got  a  couple  of  old  fire-dogs  to 
keep  the  wood  from  the  hearth,  and  it  did  me  good  to 
see  the  soot  form  on  the  back  of  the  chimney  which  I 
had  built,  and  I  poked  the  fire  with  more  right  and  more 
satisfaction  than  usual.  My  dwelling  was  small,  and  I 
could  hardly  entertain  an  echo  in  it ;  but  it  seemed  larger 
for  being  a  single  apartment  and  remote  from  neighbors. 
All  the  attractions  of  a  house  were  concentrated  in  one 
room;  it  was  kitchen,  chamber,  parlor,  and  keeping- 
room  ;  and  whatever  satisfaction  parent  or  child,  master 
or  servant,  derive  from  living  in  a  house,  I  enjoyed  it 
all.  Cato  says,  the  master  of  a  family  (patremfamili- 
as)  must  have  in  his  rustic  villa  "  cellam  oleariam,  vina- 
riam,  dolia  multa,  uti  lubeat  caritatem  expectare,  et  rei, 
et  virtuti,  et  gloria  erit,"  that  is,  "  an  oil  and  wine  cellar, 
many  casks,  so  that  it  may  be  pleasant  to  expect  hard 
times;  it  will  be  for  his  advantage,  and  virtue,  and 
glory."  I  had  in  my  cellar  a  firkin  of  potatoes,  about 
two  quarts  of  peas  with  the  weevil  in  them,  and  on  my 
shelf  a  little  rice,  a  jug  of  molasses,  and  of  rye  and  In- 
dian  meal  a  peck  each. 

I  sometimes  dream  of  a  larger  and  more  populous- 
house,  standing  in  a  golden  age,  of  enduring  materials, 
and  without  ginger-bread  work,  which  shall  still  consist 
of  only  one  room,  a  vast,  rude,  substantial,  primitive 
hall,  without  ceiling  or  plastering,  with  bare  rafters  &nd 
purlins  supporting  a  sort  of  lower  heaven  over  ore's 
head, — useful  to  keep  off  rain  and  sncw ;  where  the  ki  ag 


262  WALDEN. 

and  queen  posts  stand  out  to  receive  yoar  homage,  when 
you  have  done  reverence  to  the  prostrate  Saturn  of  an 
older  dynasty  on  stepping  over  the  sill ;  a  cavernous 
house,  wherein  you  must  reach  up  a  torch  upon  a  pole 
to  see  the  roof;  where  some  may  live  in  the  fire-place, 
some  in  the  recess  of  a  window,  and  some  on  settles,  some 
at  one  end  of  the  hall,  some  at  another,  and  some  aloft 
on  rafters  with  the  spiders,  if  they  choose ;  a  house  which 
you  have  got  into  when  you  have  opened  the  outside 
door,  and  the  ceremony  is  over ;  where  the  weary  trav 
eller  may  wash,  and  eat,  and  converse,  and  sleep,  with 
out  further  journey;  such  a  shelter  as  you  would  be 
glad  to  reach  in  a  tempestuous  night,  containing  all  the 
essentials  of  a  house,  and  nothing  for  house-keeping ; 
where  you  can  see  all  the  treasures  of  the  house  at  one 
view,  and  every  thing  hangs  upon  its  peg  that  a  man 
should  use  ;  at  once  kitchen,  pantry,  parlor,  chamber, 
store-house,  and  garret;  where  y:>u  can  see  so  necessary 
a  thing  as  a  barrel  or  a  ladder,  so  convenient  a  thing  as  a 
cupboard,  and  hear  the  pot  boil,  and  pay  your  respects 
to  the  fire  that  cooks  your  dinner  and  the  oven  that 
bakes  your  bread,  and  the  necessary  furniture  and  uten 
sils  are  the  chief  ornaments ;  where  the  washing  is  not 
put  out,  nor  the  fire,  nor  the  mistress,  and  perhaps  you 
are  sometimes  requested  to  move  from  off  the  trap-door, 
when  the  cook  would  descend  into  the  cellar,  and  so  learn 
whether  the  ground  is  solid  or  hollow  beneath  you  without 
stamping.  A  house  whose  inside  is  as  open  and  mani 
fest  as  a  bird's  nest,  and  you  cannot  go  in  at  the  front 
door  and  out  at  the  back  without  seeing  some  of  its  in 
habitants  ;  where  to  be  a  guest  is  to  be  presented  with 
the  freedom  of  the  house,  and  not  to  be  carefully  ex 
cluded  from  seven  eighths  of  it,  shut  up  in  a  particular 


HOUSE-WARMING.  2t>3 

cell,  and  told  to  make  yourself  at  home  there,  —  in 
solitary  confinement.  Nowadays  the  host  does  not  Ad 
mit  you  to  his  hearth,  but  has  got  .the  mason  to  baild 
one  foivyourself  somewhere  in  his  alley,  and  hospitality 
is  the  art  of  keeping  you  at  the  greatest  distance. 
There  is  as  much  secrecy  about  the  cooking  as  if  he 
had  a  design  to  poison  you.  I  am  aware  that  I  have 
been  on  many  a  man's  premises,  and  might  have  been 
legally  ordered  off,  but  I  am  not  aware  that  I  have  been 
in  many  men's  houses.  I  might  visit  in  my  old  clothes 
a  king  and  queen  who  lived  simply  in  such  a  house  as  I 
have  described,  if  I  were  going  their  way  ;  but  backing 
out  of  a  modern  palace  will  be  all  that  I  shall  desire  to 
learn,  if  ever  I  am  caught  in  one. 

It  would  seem  as  if  the  very  language  of  our  parlors 
would  lose  all  its  nerve  and  degenerate  into  parlaver 
wholly,  our  lives  pass  at  such  remoteness  from  its  sym 
bols,  and  its  metaphors  and  tropes  are  necessarily  so  far 
fetched,  through  slides  and  dumb-waiters,  as  it  were ;  in 
other  words,  the  parlor  is  so  far  from  the  kitchen  and 
workshop.  The  dinner  even  is  only  the  parable  of  a  din 
ner,  commonly.  As  if  only  the  savage  dwelt  near  enough 
to  Nature  and  Truth  to  borrow  a  trope  from  them. 
How  can  the  scholar,  who  dwells  away  in  the  North 
West  Territory  or  the  Isle  of  Man,  tell  what  is  par 
liamentary  in  the  kitchen  ? 

However,  only  one  or  two  of  my  guests  were  ever 
bold  enough  to  stay  and  eat  a  hasty-pudding  with  me ; 
but  when  they  saw  that  crisis  approaching  they  beai  a 
hasty  retreat  rather,  as  if  it  would  shake  the  house  to 
its  foundations.  Nevertheless,  it  stood  through  a  great 
many  hasty-puddings. 

I  did  not  plaster  till  it  was  freezing  weather    I  brought 


264  WALDEN. 

over  some  whiter  and  cleaner  sand  for  this  purpose  from 
the  opposite  shore  of  the  pond  in  a  boat,  a  sort  of  con 
veyance  which  would  have  tempted  me  to  go  much  far 
ther  if  necessary.  My  house  had  in  the  mean  while 
been  shingled  down  to  the  ground  on  every  side.  In 
lathing  I  was  pleased  to  be  able  to  send  home  each  nai). 
with  a  single  blow  of  the  hammer,  and  it  was  my  ambi 
tion  to  transfer  the  plaster  from  the  board  to  the  wall 
neatly  and  rapidly.  I  remembered  the  story  of  a  con 
ceited  fellow,  who,  in  fine  clothes,  was  wont  to  lounge 
about  the  village  once,  giving  advice  to  workmen.  Ven 
turing  one  day  to  substitute  deeds  for  words,  he  turned 
up  his  cuffs,  seized  a  plasterer's  board,  and  having  load 
ed  his  trowel  without  mishap,  with  a  complacent  look 
toward  the  lathing  overhead,  made  a  bold  gesture  thith 
erward  ;  and  straightway,  to  his  complete  discomfiture, 
received  the  whole  contents  in  his  ruffled  bosom.  I  ad 
mired  anew  the  economy  and  convenience  of  plastering, 
which  so  effectually  shuts  out  the  cold  and  takes  a  hand 
some  finish,  and  I  learned  the  various  casualties  to 
which  the  plasterer  is  liable.  I  was  surprised  to  see 
how  thirsty  the  bricks  were  which  drank  up  all  the 
moisture  in  my  plaster  before  I  had  smoothed  it,  and 
how  many  pailfuls  of  water  it  takes  to  christen  a  new 
hearth.  I  had  the  previous  winter  made  a  small  quan 
tity  of  lime  by  burning  the  shells  of  the  Unio  fluviatilis, 
which  our  river  affords,  for  the  sake  of  the  experiment ; 
so  that  I  knew  where  my  materials  came  from.  I  might 
have  got  good  limestone  within  a  mile  or  two  and  burned 
it  myself,  if  I  had  cared  to  do  so. 


The  pond  had  in  the  mean  while  skimmed  over  in  the 


HOUSE-WARMING.  265 

shadiest  and  shallowest  coves,  some  days  or  even  weeks 
before  the  general  freezing.  The  first  ice  is  especially 
interesting  and  perfect,  being  hard,  dark,  and  transpar 
ent,  and  affords  the  best  opportunity  that  ever  offers  for 
examining  the  bottom  where  it  is  shallow ;  for  you  can 
lie  at  your  length  on  ice  only  an  inch  thick,  like  a  ska 
ter  insect  on  the  surface  of  the  water,  and  study  the  bot 
tom  at  your  leisure,  only  two  or  three  inches  distant,  like 
a  picture  behind  a  glass,  and  the  water  is  necessarily  al 
ways  smooth  then.  There  are  many  furrows  in  the 
sand  where  some  creature  has  travelled  about  and 
doubled  on  its  tracks ;  and,  for  wrecks,  it  is  strewn  with 
the  cases  of  cadis  worms  made  of  minute  grains  of  white 
quartz.  Perhaps  these  have  creased  it,  for  you  find 
some  of  their  cases  in  the  furrows,  though  they  are  deep 
and  broad  for  them  to  make.  But  the  ice  itself  is  the 
object  of  most  interest,  though  you  must  improve  the 
earliest  opportunity  to  study  it.  If  you  examine  it 
closely  the  morning  after  it  freezes,  you  find  that  the 
greater  part  of  the  bubbles,  which  at  first  appeared  to 
be  within  it,  are  against  its  under  surface,  and,  that  more 
are  continually  rising  from  the  bottom ;  while  the  ice  is 
as  yet  comparatively  solid  and  dark,  that  is,  you  see  the 
water  through  it.  These  bubbles  are  from  an  eightieth 
to  an  eighth  of  an  inch  in  diameter,  very  clear  and  beau 
tiful,  and  you  see  your  face  reflected  in  them  through 
the  ice.  There  may  be  thirty  or  forty  of  them  to  a 
square  inch.  There  are  also  already  within  the  ice  nar 
row  oblong  perpendicular  bubbles  about  half  an  inch 
long,  sharp  cones  with  the  apex  upward ;  or  oftener,  if 
the  ice  is  quite  fresh,  minute  spherical  bubbles  one  di 
rectly  above  another,  like  a  string  of  beads.  But  these 
within  the  ice  are  not  so  numerous  nor  obvious  as  those 


266  WALDEN. 

beneath.  I  sometimes  used  to  cast  on  stones  to  try  the 
strength  of  the  ice,  and  those  which  broke  through  car 
ried  in  air  with  them,  which  formed  very  large  and  con 
spicuous  white  bubbles  beneath.  One  day  when  I  came 
to  the  same  place  forty-eight  hours  afterward,  I  found 
that  those  large  bubbles  were  still  perfect,  though  an  inch 
more  of  ice  had  formed,  as  I  could  see  distinctly  by  the 
eseam  in  the  edge  of  a  cake.  But  as  the  last  two  days 
had  been  very  warm,  like  an  Indian  summer,  the  ice 
was  not  now  transparent,  showing  the  dark  green  color 
of  the  water,  and  the  bottom,  but  opaque  and  whitish  or 
gray,  and  though  twice  as  thick  was  hardly  stronger 
than  before,  for  the  air  bubbles  had  greatly  expanded 
under  this  heat  and  run  together,  and  lost  their  regular 
ity  ;  they  were  no  longer  one  directly  over  another,  but 
often  like  silvery  coins  poured  from  a  bag,  one  overlap 
ping  another,  or  in  thin  flakes,  as  if  occupying  slight 
cleavages.  The  beauty  of  the  ice  was  gone,  and  it  was 
too  late  to  study  the  bottom.  Being  curious  to  know 
what  position  my  great  bubbles  occupied  with  regard  to 
the  new  ice,  I  broke  out  a  cake  containing  a  middling 
sized  one,  and  turned  it  bottom  upward.  The  new  ice 
had  formed  around  and  under  the  bubble,  so  that  it  \\  as 
included  between  the  two  ices.  It  was  wholly  in  the 
lower  ice,  but  close  against  the  upper,  and  was  flattish, 
or  perhaps  slightly  lenticular,  with  a  rounded  edge,  a 
quarter  of  an  inch  deep  by  four  inches  in  diameter ;  and 
I  was  surprised  to  find  that  directly  under  the  bubble  the 
ice  was  melted  with  great  regularity  in  the  form  of  a  sau 
cer  reversed,  to  the  height  of  five  eighths  of  an  inch  in 
the  middle,  leaving  a  thin  partition  there  between  the 
water  and  the  bubble,  hardly  an  eighth  of  an  inch  thick  ; 
and  in  many  places  the  small  bubbles  in  this  partition  had 


HOUSE-WARMING.  267 

burst  out  doT\  nward,  and  probably  there  was  no  ice  at  all 
under  ihe  largest  bubbles,  which  were  a  foot  in  diameter. 
I  inferred  that  the  infinite  number  of  minute  bubbles 
which  I  had  first  seen  against  the  under  surface  of  the; 
ice  were  now  frozen  in  likewise,  and  that  each,  in  its 
degree,  had  operated  like  a  burning  glass  on  the  ice  be 
neath  to  melt  and  rot  it.  These  are  the  little  air-guns 
which  contribute  to  make  the  ice  crack  and  whoop. 


At  length  the  winter  set  in  in  good  earnest,  just  as  I 
had  finished  plastering,  and  the  wind  began  to  howl 
around  the  house  as  if  it  had  not  had  permission  to  do 
so  till  then.  Night  after  night  the  geese  came  lumber 
ing  in  in  the  dark  with  a  clangor  and  a  whistling  of 
wings,  even  after  the  ground  was  covered  with  snow, 
some  to  alight  in  AValden,  and  some  flying  low  over  the 
woods  toward  Fair  Haven,  bound  for  Mexico.  Several 
times,  when  returning  from  the  village  at  ten  or  eleven 
o'clock  at  night,  I  heard  the  tread  of  a  flock  of  geese,  or 
else  ducks,  on  the  dry  leaves  in  the  woods  by  a  pond- 
hole  behind  my  dwelling,  where  they  had  come  up  to 
feed,  and  the  faint  honk  or  quack  of  their  leader  as  they 
hurried  off.  In  1845  Walden  froze  entirely  over  for 
the  first  time  on  the  night  of  the  22d  of  December, 
Flints'  and  other  shallower  ponds  and  the  river  having 
been  frozen  ten  days  or  more ;  in  '46,  the  16th ;  in  '49, 
about  the  31st;  and  in  '50,  about  the  27th  of  December; 
in  '52,  the  5th  of  January ;  in  '53,  the  31st  of  December. 
The  snow  had  already  cohered  the  ground  since  the 
25th  of  November,  and  surrounded  me  suddenly  with 
the  scenery  of  winter.  I  withdrew  yet  farther  into  my 
shell,  and  end  ^avored  to  keep  a  bright  fire  both  within 


268  WALDEN. 

my  house  and  \\ithin  my  breast.  My  employment  out 
of  doors  now  was  to  collect  the  dead  wood  in  the  forest, 
bringing  it  in  my  hands  or  on  my  shoulders,  or  some 
times  trailing  a  dead  pine  tree  under  each  arm  to  my 
shed.  An  old  forest  fence  which  had  seen  its  best  days 
was  a  great  haul  for  me.  I  sacrificed  it  to  Vulcan,  for 
it  was  past  serving  the  god  Terminus.  How  much  more 
interesting  an  event  is  that  man's  suppci  who  has  just 
been  forth  in  the  snow  to  hunt,  nay,  you  might  say,  steal, 
the  fuel  to  cook  it  with !  His  bread  and  meat  are  sweet. 
There  are  enough  fagots  and  waste  wood  of  all  kinds 
in  the  forests  of  most  of  our  towns  to  support  many  fires, 
but  which  at  present  warm  none,  and,  some  think,  hin 
der  the  growth  of  the  young  wood.  There  was  also  the 
drift-wood  of  the  pond.  In  the  course  of  the  summer  I 
had  discovered  a  raft  of  pitch-pine  logs  with  the  bark 
on,  pinned  together  by  the  Irish  when  the  railroad  was 
built.  This  I  hauled  up  partly  on  the  shore.  After 
soaking  two  years  and  then  lying  high  six  months  it 
was  perfectly  sound,  though  waterlogged  past  drying. 
I  amused  myself  one  winter  day  with  sliding  this  piece 
meal  across  the  pond,  nearly  half  a  mile,  skating  behind 
with  one  end  of  a  log  fifteen  feet  long  on  my  shoulder, 
and  the  other  on  the  ice ;  or  I  tied  several  logs  together 
with  a  birch  withe,  and  then,  with  a  longer  birch  or  al 
der  which  had  a  hook  at  the  end,  dragged  them  across. 
Though  completely  waterlogged  and  almost  as  heavy 
as  lead,  they  not  only  burned  long,  but  made  a  very  hot 
fire ;  nay,  I  thought  that  they  burned  better  for  the 
soaking,  as  if  the  pitch,  being  confined  by  the  water, 
burned  longer  as  in  a  lamp. 

Gilpin,  in  his  account  of  the  forest  borderers  of  Eng 
land,  says  that  "  the  encroachments  of  trespassers,  and 


HOUSE-WARMING.  269 

the  Louses  and  fences  thus  raised  on  the  bolder?  of  the 
forest,"  were  "  considered  as  great  nuisances  by  the  old 
forest  law,  and  were  severely  punished  under  the  name 
of  purprestures,  as  tending  id  terrorem  ferarum  —  ad 
nocumetitiun  forestce,  &c.,"  to  the  frightening  of  the  game 
and  the  detriment  of  the  forest.  But  I  was  interested 
in  the  preservation  of  the  venison  and  the  vert  more 
than  the  hunters  or  wood-choppers,  and  as  much  as 
though  I  had  been  the  Lord  Warden  himself;  and  if 
any  part  was  burned,  though  I  burned  it  myself  by  acci 
dent,  I  grieved  with  a  grief  that  lasted  longer  and  was 
more  inconsolable  than  that  of  the  proprietors ;  nay,  I 
grieved  when  it  was  cut  down  by  the  proprietors  them 
selves.  I  would  that  our  farmers  when  they  cut  down 
a  iorcst  felt  some  of  that  awe  which  the  old  Romans  did 
when  they  came  to  thin,  or  let  in  the  light  to,  a  conse 
crated  grove,  (lucum  conlucare,)  that  is,  would  believe 
that  it  is  sacred  to  some  god.  The  Roman  made  an 
expiatory  offering,  and  prayed,  Whatever  god  or  god 
dess  thou  art  to  whom  this  grove  is  sacred,  be  propitious 
to  me,  my  family,  and  children,  &c. 

It  is  remarkable  what  a  value  is  still  put  upon  wood 
even  in  this  age  and  in  this  new  country,  a  value  more 
permanent  and  universal  than  that  of  gold.  After  all 
our  discoveries  and  inventions  no  man  will  go  by  a  pile 
of  wood.  It  is  as  precious  to  us  as  it  was  to  our  Saxon 
and  Norman  ancestors.  If  they  made  their  bows  of  it, 
we  make  our  gun-stocks  of  it.  Michaux,  more  than 
thirty  years  ago,  says  that  the  price  of  wood  for  fuel  ID 
New  York  and  Philadelphia  "  nearly  equals,  and  some 
times  exceeds,  that  of  the  best  wood  in  Paris,  though 
this  immense  capital  annually  requires  more  than  three 
hundred  thousand  cords,  and  is  surrounded  to  the  dis- 


270  WALDEN. 

tance  of  three  hundred  miles  by  cultivated  plains."  In 
this  town  the  price  of  wood  rises  almost  steadily,  and  the 
only  question  is,  hrw  much  higher  it  is  to  be  this  year 
than  it  was  the  last.  Mechanics  and  tradesmen  who 
come  in  person  to  the  forest  on  no  other  errand,  are 
sure  to  attend  the  wood  auction,  and  even  pay  a  high 
price  for  the  privilege  of  gleaning  after  the  wood-chop 
per.  It  is  now  many  years  that  men  have  resorted  to 
the  forest  for  fuel  and  the  materials  of  the  arts;  the 
New  Englander  and  the  New  Hollander,  the  Parisian 
and  the  Celt,  the  farmer  and  Robinhood,  Goody  Blake 
and  Harry  Gill,  in  most  parts  of  the  world  the  prince 
and  the  peasant,  the  scholar  and  the  savage,  equally  re 
quire  still  a  few  sticks  from  the  forest  to  warm  them  and 
cook  their  food.  Neither  could  I  do  without  them. 

Every  man  looks  at  his  wood-pile  with  a  kind  of  af 
fection.  I  loved  to  have  mine  before  my  window,  and 
the  more  chips  the  better  to  remind  me  of  my  pleasing 
work.  I  had  an  old  axe  which  nobody  claimed,  with 
which  by  spells  in  winter  days,  on  the  sunny  side  of  the 
house,  I  played  about  the  stumps  which  I  had  got  out  of 
my  bean-field.  As  my  driver  prophesied  when  I  was 
ploughing,  they  warmed  me  twice,  once  while  I  was  split 
ting  them,  and  again  when  they  were  on  the  fire,  so  that 
no  fuel  could  give  out  more  heat.  As  for  the  axe,  I  was 
advised  to  get  the  village  blacksmith  to  "jump  "  it ;  but 
I  jumped  him,  and,  putting  a  hickory  helve  from  the 
woods  into  it,  made  it  do.  If  it  was  dull,  it  was  at  least 
hung  true. 

A  few  pieces  of  fat  pine  were  a  great  treasure.  It  is 
interesting  to  remember  how  much  of  this  food  for  fire 
is  still  concealed  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth.  In  pre 
vious  years  I  had  often  gone  "  prospecting  "  over  some 


HOUSE-WARMING.  27) 

bare  hill-side,  where  a  pitch-pine  wood  had  formerly 
stood,  and  got  out  the  fat  pine  roots.  They  are  almost 
indestructible.  Stumps  thirty  or  forty  years  old,  at 
least,  will  still  be  sound  at  the  core,  though  the  sap- 
wood  has  all  become  vegetable  mould,  as  appears  by 
the  scales  of  the  thick  bark  forming  a  ring  level  with 
the  earth  four  or  five  inches  distant  from  the  heart. 
With  axe  and  shovel  you  explore  this  mine,  and  follow 
the  marrowy  store,  yellow  as  beef  tallow,  or  as  if  you 
had  struck  on  a  vein  of  gold,  deep  into  the  earth.  But 
commonly  I  kindled  my  fire  with  the  dry  leaves  of  the 
forest,  which  I  had  stored  up  in  my  shed  before  the 
snow  came.  Green  hickory  finely  split  makes  the  wood- 
chopper's  kindlings,  when  he  has  a  camp  in  the  woods. 
Once  in  a  while  I  got  a  little  of  this.  When  the  vil 
lagers  were  lighting  their  fires  beyond  the  horizon,  I  too 
gave  notice  to  the  various  wild  inhabitants  of  Walden 
vale,  by  a  smoky  streamer  from  my  chimney,  that  I  was 
awake.  — 

Light-winged  Smoke,  Icarian  bird, 
Melting  thy  pinions  in  thy  upward  flight, 
Lark  without  song,  and  messenger  of  dawn, 
Circling  above  the  hamlets  as  thy  nest ; 
Or  else,  departing  dream,  and  shadowy  form 
Of  midnight  vision,  gathering  up  thy  skirts ; 
By  night  star-veiling,  and  by  day 
Darkening  the  light  and  blotting  out  the  sun ; 
Go  thou  my  incense  upward  from  this  hearth, 
And  ask  the  gods  to  pardon  this  clear  flame. 

Hard  green  wood  just  cut,  though  I  used  but  little 
of  that,  answered  my  purpose  better  than  any  other.  I 
sometimes  left  a  good  fire  when  I  went  to  take  a  walk 
in  a  winter  afternoon ;  and  when  I  returned,  three  or 
four  hours  afterward,  it  wouil  be  still  alive  and  glowing 


272  WALDEN. 

My  house  was  not  empty  though  I  was  gone.  It  was  aa 
if  I  had  left  a  cheerful  housekeeper  behind.  It  was  I 
and  Fire  that  lived  there ;  and  commonly  my  house 
keeper  proved  trustworthy.  One  day,  however,  as  I  was 
splitting  wood,  I  thought  that  I  would  just  look  in  at  the 
window  and  see  if  the  house  was  not  on  fire ;  it  was  the 
only  time  I  remember  to  have  been  particularly  anxious 
on  this  score;  so  I  looked  and  saw  that  a  spark  had 
caught  my  bed,  and  I  went  in  and  extinguished  it  when 
it  had  burned  a  place  as  big  as  my  hand.  But  my  house 
occupied  so  sunny  and  sheltered  a  position,  and  its  roof 
was  so  low,  that  I  could  afford  to  let  the  fire  go  out  in 
the  middle  of  almost  any  winter  day. 

The  moles  nested  in  my  cellar,  nibbling  every  third 
potato,  and  making  a  snug  bed  even  there  of  some  hair 
left  after  plastering  and  of  brown  paper ;  for  even  the 
wildest  animals  love  comfort  and  warmth  as  well  as 
man,  and  they  survive  the  winter  only  because  they  are 
so  careful  to  secure  them.  Some  of  my  friends  spoke 
as  if  I  was  coming  to  the  woods  on  purpose  to  freeze 
myself.  The  animal  merely  makes  a  bed,  which  he 
warms  with  his  body  in  a  sheltered  place;  but  man, 
having  discovered  fire,  boxes  up  some  air  in  a  spacious 
apartment,  and  warms  that,  instead  of  robbing  himself, 
makes  that  his  bed,  in  which  he  can  move  about  divest 
ed  of  more  cumbrous  clothing,  maintain  a  kind  of  sum 
mer  in  the  midst  of  winter,  and  by  means  of  windows 
even  admit  the  light,  and  with  a  lamp  lengthen  out  the 
day.  Thus  he  goes  a  step  or  two  beyond  instinct,  and 
saves  a  little  time  for  the  fine  arts.  Though,  when  I 
had  been  exposed  to  the  rudest  blasts  a  long  time,  my 
whole  body  began  to  grow  torpid,  when  I  reached  the 
genial  atmosphere  of  my  house  I  soon  recovered  my 


HOUSE-WARMING.  273 

faculties  and  prolonged  my  life.  But  the  most  luxuri 
ously  housed  has  little  to  boast  of  in  this  respect,  nor 
need  we  trouble  ourselves  to  speculate  how  the  human 
race  may  be  at  last  destroyed.  It  would  be  easy  to  cut 
their  threads  any  time  with  a  little  sharper  blast  from 
the  north.  We  go  on  dating  from  Cold  Fridays  and 
Great  Snows  ;  but  a  little  colder  Friday,  or  greater  snow, 
would  put  a  period  to  man's  existence  on  the  globe. 

The  next  winter  I  used  a  small  cooking-stove  for 
economy,  since  I  did  not  own  the  forest ;  but  it  did  not 
keep  fire  so  well  as  the  open  fire-place.  Cooking  was 
then,  for  the  most  part,  no  longer  a  poetic,  but  merely  a 
chemic  process.  It  will  soon  be  forgotten,  in  these  days 
of  stoves,  that  we  used  to  roast  potatoes  in  the  ashes, 
after  the  Indian  fashion.  The  stove  not  only  took  up 
room  and  scented  the  house,  but  it  concealed  the  fire, 
and  I  felt  as  if  I  had  lost  a  companion.  You  can  al 
ways  see  a  face  in  the  fire.  The  laborer,  looking  into 
it  at  evening,  purifies  his  thoughts  of  the  dross  and 
earthiness  which  they  have  accumulated  during  the 
day.  But  I  could  no  longer  sit  and  look  into  the  fire, 
and  the  pertinent  words  of  a  poet  recurred  to  me  with 
new  force.  — 


1  Never,  bright  flame,  may  be  denied  to  me 
Thy  dear,  life  imaging,  close  sympathy. 
What  but  my  hopes  shot  upward  e'er  so  bright  ? 
What  but  my  fortunes  sunk  so  low  in  night  ? 

Why  art  thou  banished  from  our  hearth  and  hall, 
Thou  who  art  welcomed  and  beloved  by  all  ? 
Was  thy  existence  then  too  fanciful 
For  our  life's  common  light,  who  are  so  dull  ? 
Did  thy  bright  gleam  mysterious  converse  hold 
With  our  congenial  souls  ?  secrets  too  bold  ? 

18 


274  WALDEN. 

Well,  we  are  safe  and  strong,  for  now  we  sit 
Beside  a  hearth  where  no  dim  shadows  flit, 
Where  nothing  cheers  nor  saddens,  but  a  fire 
Warms  feet  and  hands  —  nor  does  to  more  aspire ; 
By  whose  compact  utilitarian  heap 
The  present  may  sit  down  and  go  to  sleep, 
Nor  fear  the  ghosts  who  from  the  dim  past  walked, 
And  with  us  by  the  unequal  light  of  the  old  wood  lire 
talked.5' 


FORMER   INHABITANTS;    iND 
WINTER    VISITORS. 


I  WEATHERED  some  merry  snow  storms,  and  spent 
some  cheerful  winter  evenings  by  my  fire-side,  while  the 
snow  whirled  wildly  without,  and  even  the  hooting  of  the 
owl  was  hushed.  For  many  weeks  I  met  no  one  in  my 
walks  but  those  who  came  occasionally  to  cut  wood  and 
Bled  it  to  the  village.  The  elements,  however,  abetted 
me  in  making  a  path  through  the  deepest  snow  in  the 
woods,  for  when  I  had  once  gone  through  the  wind  blew 
the  oak  leaves  into  my  tracks,  where  they  lodged,  and 
by  absorbing  the  rays  of  the  sun  melted  the  snow,  and 
so  not  only  made  a  dry  bed  for  my  feet,  but  in  the  night 
their  dark  line  was  my  guide.  For  human  society  I 
was  obliged  to  conjure  up  the  former  occupants  of  these 
woods.  Within  the  memory  of  many  of  my  townsmen 
the  road  near  which  my  house  stands  resounded  with 
the  laugh  and  gossip  of  inhabitants,  and  the  woods  which 
border  it  were  notched  and  dotted  here  and  there  with 
their  little  gardens  and  dwellings,  though  it  was  then 
much  more  shut  in  by  the  forest  than  now.  In  some 
places,  within  my  own  remembrance,  the  pinesr  would 

(275) 


276  WALDEN. 

scrape  both  sides  of  a  chaise  at  once,  and  women  ano 
children  who  were  compelled  to  go  this  way  to  Lincoln 
alone  and  on  foot  did  it  with  fear,  and  often  ran  a  good 
part  of  the  distance.  Though  mainly  but  a  humble 
route  to  neighboring  villages,  or  for  the  woodman's 
team,  it  once  amused  the  traveller  more  than  now  by  its 
variety,  and  lingered  longer  in  his  memory.  When 
now  firm  open  fields  stretch  from  the  village  to  the 
woods,  it  then  ran  through  a  maple  swamp  on  a  founda 
tion  of  logs,  the  remnants  of  which,  doubtless,  still  un 
derlie  the  present  dusty  highway,  from  the  Stratten, 
now  the  Alms  House,  Farm,  to  Brister's  Hill. 

East  of  my  bean-field,  across  the  road,  lived  Cato  In- 
graham,  slave  of  Duncan  Ingraham,  Esquire,  gentleman 
of  Concord  village ;  who  built  his  slave  a  house,  and 
gave  him  permission  to  live  in  Walden  Woods  ;  —  Cato, 
not  Uticensis,  but  Concordiensis.  Some  say  that  he 
was  a  Guinea  Negro.  There  are  a  few  who  remember 
his  little  patch  among  the  walnuts,  which  he  let  grow  up 
till  he  should  be  old  and  need  them ;  but  a  younger  and 
whiter  speculator  got  them  at  last.  He  too,  however, 
occupies  an  equally  narrow  house  at  present.  Cato's 
half-obliterated  cellar  hole  still  remains,  though  known 
to  few,  being  concealed  from  the  traveller  by  a  fringe 
of  pines.  It  is  now  filled  with  the  smooth  sumach, 
(Rhus  glabra,)  and  one  of  the  earliest  species  of  golden- 
rod  (Solidago  stricta)  grows  there  luxuriantly. 

Here,  by  the  very  corner  of  my  field,  still  nearer  to 
town,  Zilpha,  a  colored  woman,  had  her  little  house, 
wher-3  she  spun  linen  for  the  townsfolk,  making  the 
Walden  Woods  ring  with  her  shrill  singing,  for  she  had 
a,  loud  and  notable  voice.  At  length,  in  the  war  of 
1812,  her  dwelling  was  set  on  fire  by  English  soldiers, 


FORMER    INHABITANTS.  277 

on  parole,  when  she  was  away,  and  her  cat 
and  dog  and  hens  were  all  burned  up  together.  She 
led  a  hard  life,  and  somewhat  inhumane.  One  old  fre 
quenter  of  these  woods  remembers,  that  as  he  passed  her 
house  one  noon  he  heard  her  muttering  to  herself  over 
her  gurgling  pot,  —  "  Ye  are  all  bones,  bones !"  I  have 
seen  bricks  amid  the  oak  copse  there. 

Down  the  road,  on  the  right  hand,  on  Brister's  Hill, 
lived  Brister  Freeman,  "  a  handy  Negro,"  slave  of 
Squire  Cummings  once,  —  there  where  grow  still  the 
apple-trees  which  Brister  planted  and  tended ;  large  old 
trees  now,  but  their  fruit  still  wild  and  ciderish  to  my 
taste.  Not  long  since  I  read  his  epitaph  in  the  old  Lin 
coln  burying-ground,  a  little  on  one  side,  near  the  un 
marked  graves  of  some  British  grenadiers  who  fell  in 
the  retreat  from  Concord,  —  where  he  is  styled  "  Sippio 
Brister,"  —  Scipio  Africanus  he  had  some  title  to  be 
called,  —  "a  man  of  color,"  as  if  he  were  discolored. 
It  also  told  me,  with  staring  emphasis,  when  he  died ; 
which  was  but  an  indirect  way  of  informing  me  that 
he  ever  lived.  With  him  dwelt  Fenda,  his  hospitable 
ivife,  who  told  fortunes,  yet  pleasantly, — large,  round, 
and  black,  blacker  than  any  of  the  children  of  night, 
such  a  dusky  orb  as  never  rose  on  Concord  before  or 
since. 

Farther  down  the  hill,  on  the  left,  on  the  old  road  in 
the  woods,  are  marks  of  some  homestead  of  the  Strat- 
ten  family ;  whose  orchard  once  covered  all  the  slope  of 
Brister's  Hill,  but  was  long  since  killed  out  by  pitch 
pines,  excepting  a  few  stumps,  whose  old  roots  furnish 
»till  the  wild  stocks  of  many  a  thrifty  village  tree. 

Nearer  yet  to  town,  you  come  to  Breed's  location,  on 
he  other  side  of  the  way,  just  on  the  edge  of  the  wood ; 


278  WALDEN. 

ground  famous  for  the  pranks  of  a  demon  not  distinctly 
named  in  old  mythology,  who  has  acted  a  prominent 
and  astounding  part  in  our  New  England  life,  and  de 
serves,  as  much  as  any  mythological  character,  to  have 
his  biography  written  one  day ;  who  first  comes  in  the 
guise  of  a  friend  or  hired  man,  and  then  robs  and  mur 
ders  the  whole  family,  —  New-England  Rum.  But  his 
tory  must  not  yet  tell  the  tragedies  enacted  here  ;  let 
time  intervene  in  some  measure  to  assuage  and  lend 
an  azure  tint  to  them.  Here  the  most  indistinct  and 
dubious  tradition  says  that  once  a  tavern  stood;  the 
well  the  same,  which  tempered  the  traveller's  beverage 
and  refreshed  his  steed.  Here  then  men  saluted  one 
another,  and  heard  and  told  the  news,  and  went  their 
ways  again. 

Breed's  hut  was  standing  only  a  dozen  years  ago, 
though  it  had  long  been  unoccupied.  It  was  about  the 
size  of  mine.  It  was  set  on  fire  by  mischievous  boys, 
one  Election  night,  if  I  do  not  mistake.  I  lived  on  the 
edge  of  the  village  then,  and  had  just  lost  myself  over 
Davenant's  Gondibert,  that  winter  that  I  labored  with  a 
lethargy,  —  which,  by  the  way,  I  never  knew  whether  to 
regard  as  a  family  complaint,  having  an  uncle  who  goes 
to  sleep  shaving  himself,  and  is  obliged  to  sprout  pota 
toes  in  a  cellar  Sundays,  in  order  to  keep  awake  and 
keep  the  Sabbath,  or  as  the  consequence  of  my  attempt 
to  read  Chalmers'  collection  of  English  poetry  without 
skipping.  It  fairly  overcame  my  Nervii.  I  had  just 
sunk  my  head  on  this  when  the  bells  rung  fire,  and  in 
hot  haste  the  engines  rolled  that  way,  led  by  a  strag 
gling  troop  of  men  and  boys,  and  I  among  the  foremost, 
for  I  had  leaped  the  brook.  We  thought  it  ^  as  far  south 
aver  the  woods,  —  we  who  had  run  to  fires  before, — 


FORMER    INHABITANTS.  279 

barn,  shop,  or  dwelling-house,  or  all  together.  "  It's  Ba 
ker's  barn,"  cried  one.  "  It  is  the  Codman  Place,"  af 
firmed  another.  And  then  fresh  sparks  went  up  above 
the  wood,  as  if  the  roof  fell  in,  and  \ve  all  shouted 
"  Concord  to  the  rescue  !  "  Wagons  shot  past  with  fu 
rious  speed  and  crushing  loads,  bearing,  perchance, 
among  the  rest,  the  agent  of  the  Insurance  Company, 
who  was  bound  to  go  however  far ;  and  ever  and  anoo 
the  engine  bell  tinkled  behind,  more  slow  and  sure,  and 
rearmost  of  all,  as  it  was  afterward  whispered,  came 
they  who  set  the  fire  and  gave  the  alarm.  Thus  we 
kept  on  like  true  idealists,  rejecting  the  evidence  of  our 
senses,  until  at  a  turn  in  the  road  we  heard  the  crackling 
and  actually  felt  the  heat  of  the  fire  from  over  the  wall, 
and  realized,  alas  !  that  we  were  there.  The  very 
nearness  of  the  fire  but  cooled  our  ardor.  At  first  we 
thought  to  throw  a  frog-pond  on  to  it ;  but  concluded  to 
let  it  burn,  it  was  so  far  gone  and  so  worthless.  So  we 
stood  round  our  engine,  jostled  one  another,  expressed 
our  sentiments  through  speaking  trumpets,  or  in  lower 
tone  referred  to  the  great  conflagrations  which  the  world 
has  witnessed,  including  Bascom's  shop,  and,  between 
ourselves,  we  thought  that,  were  we  there  in  season  with 
our  "  tub,"  and  a  full  frog-pond  by,  we  could  turn  that 
threatened  last  and  universal  one  into  another  flood. 
We  finally  retreated  without  doing  any  mischief,  —  re 
turned  to  sleep  and  Gondibert.  But  as  for  Gondibert, 
I  would  except  that  passage  in  the  preface  about  wit 
being  the  soul's  powder,  — "  but  most  of  mankind  are 
strangers  to  wit,  as  Indians  are  to  powder." 

It  chanced  that  I  walked  that  way  across  the  fields 
the  following  night,  about  the  same  hour,  and  hearing  a 
low  moaning  at  this  spot,  I  drew  near  in  the  dark,  and 


280  WALDEN. 

discovered  the  only  survivor  of  the  family  that  I  know, 
the  heir  of  both  its  virtues  and  its  vices,  who  alone  was 
interested  in  this  burning,  lying  on  his  stomach  and 
looking  over  the  cellar  wall  at  the  still  smouldering  cin 
ders  beneath,  muttering  to  himself,  as  is  his  wont.  He 
had  been  working  far  off  in  the  river  meadows  all  day, 
and  had  improved  the  first  moments  that  he  could 
call  his  own  to  visit  the  home  of  his  fathers  and  his 
youth.  He  gazed  into  the  cellar  from  all  sides  and 
points  of  view  by  turns,  always  lying  down  to  it,  as  if 
there  was  some  treasure,  which  he  remembered,  con 
cealed  between  the  stones,  where  there  was  absolutely 
nothing  but  a  heap  of  bricks  and  ashes.  The  house 
being  gone,  he  looked  at  what  there  was  left.  He  was 
soothed  by  the  sympathy  which  my  mere  presence  im 
plied,  and  showed  me,  as  well  as  the  darkness  permitted, 
where  the  well  was  covered  up ;  which,  thank  Heaven, 
could  never  be  burned ;  and  he  groped  long  about  the 
wall  to  find  the  well-sweep  which  his  father  had  cut  and 
mounted,  feeling  for  the  iron  hook  or  staple  by  which  a 
burden  had  been  fastened  to  the  heavy  end,  —  all  that 
he  could  now  cling  to,  —  to  convince  me  that  it  was  no 
common  "  rider."  I  felt  it,  and  still  remark  it  almost 
daily  in  my  walks,  for  by  it  hangs  the  history  of  a 
family. 

Once  more,  on  the  left,  where  are  seen  the  well  and 
lilac  bushes  by  the  wall,  in  the  now  open  field,  lived 
Nutting  and  Le  Grosse.  But  to  return  toward  Lincoln. 

Farther  in  the  woods  than  any  of  these,  where  the 
road  approaches  nearest  to  the  pond,  Wyman  the  pot 
ter  squatted,  and  furnished  his  townsmen  with  earthen 
ware,  and  left  descendants  to  succeed  him.  Neither 
were  they  rich  in  worldly  goods,  holding  the  land  by 


FORMER    INHABITANTS.  281 

sufferance  whi,.,3  they  lived ;  and  there  often  the  sheriff 
came  in  vain  to  collect  the  taxes,  and  "  attached  a  chip," 
for  form's  sake,  as  I  have  read  in  his  accounts,  there 
being  nothing  else  that  he  could  lay  his  hands  on.  One 
day  in  midsummer,  when  I  was  hoeing,  a  man  who  was 
carrying  a  load  of  pottery  to  market  stopped  his  horso 
against  my  field  and  inquired  concerning  Wyman  the 
younger.  He  had  long  ago  bought  a  potter's  wheel  of 
him,  and  wished  to  know  what  had  become  of  him.  I 
had  read  of  the  potter's  clay  and  wheel  in  Scripture, 
but  it  had  never  occurred  to  me  that  the  pots  we  use 
were  not  such  as  had  come  down  unbroken  from  those 
days,  or  grown  on  trees  like  gourds  somewhere,  and  I 
was  pleased  to  hear  that  so  fictile  an  art  was  ever  prac 
tised  in  my  neighborhood. 

The  last  inhabitant  of  these  woods  before  me  was 
un  Irishman,  Hugh  Quoil,  (if  I  have  spelt  his  name 
with  coil  enough,)  who  occupied  Wyman's  tenement,  — 
Col.  Quoil,  he  was  called.  Rumor  said  that  he  had  been 
a  soldier  at  Waterloo.  If  he  had  lived  I  should  have 
made  him  fight  his  battles  over  again.  His  trade  here 
was  that  of  a  ditcher.  Napoleon  went  to  St.  Helena ; 
Quoil  came  to  Walden  Woods.  All  I  know  of  him  is 
tragic.  He  was  a  man  of  manners,  like  one  who  had 
seen  the  world,  and  was  capable  of  more  civil  speech 
than  you  could  well  attend  to.  He  wore  a  great  coat  in 
mid-summer,  being  affected  with  the  trembling  delirium, 
and  his  face  was  the  color  of  carmine.  He  died  in  the 
road  at  the  foot  of  Brister's  Hill  shortly  after  I  came  to 
Hie  woods,  so  that  I  have  not  remembered  him  as  a 
neighbor.  Before  his  house  was  pulled  down,  when  hiy 
comrades  avoided  it  as  "  an  unlucky  castle,"  I  visited  it. 
There  lay  his  old  cbthes  curled  up  by  use,  as  if  they 


282  WALDEN. 

were  himself,  upon  his  raised  plank  bed.  His  pipe  lay 
broken  on  the  hearth,  instead  of  a  bowl  broken  at  the 
fountain.  The  last  could  never  have  been  the  symbol 
of  his  death,  for  he  confessed  to  me  that,  though  he  had 
heard  of  Blister's  Spring,  he  had  never  seen  it ;  and 
soiled  cards,  kings  of  diamonds  spades  and  hearts, 
were  scattered  over  the  floor.  One  black  chicken  which 
the  administrator  could  not  catch,  black  as  night  and  as 
silent,  not  even  croaking,  awaiting  Reynard,  still  went 
to  roost  in  the  next  apartment.  In  the  rear  there  was 
the  dim  outline  of  a  garden,  which  had  been  planted 
but  had  never  received  its  first  hoeing,  owing  to  those 
terrible  shaking  fits,  though  it  was  now  harvest  time. 
It  was  over-run  with  Roman  wormwood  and  beggar- 
ticks,  which  last  stuck  to  my  clothes  for  all  fruit.  The 
skin  of  a  woodchuck  was  freshly  stretched  upon  the 
back  of  the  house,  a  trophy  of  his  last  Waterloo ;  but 
no  warm  cap  or  mittens  would  he  want  more. 

Now  only  a  dent  in  the  earth  marks  the  site  of  these 
dwellings,  with  buried  cellar  stones,  and  strawberries, 
raspberries,  thimble-berries,  hazel-bushes,  and  sumachs 
growing  in  the  sunny  sward  there  ;  some  pitch-pine  or 
gnarled  oak  occupies  what  was  the  chimney  nook,  and 
a  sweet-scented  black-birch,  perhaps,  waves  where  the 
door-stone  was.  Sometimes  the  well  dent  is  visible, 
where  once  a  spring  oozed  ;  now  dry  and  tearless  grass  ; 
or  it  was  covered  deep,  —  not  to  be  discovered  till  some 
late  day,  —  with  a  flat  stone  under  the  sod,  when  the 
last  of  the  race  departed.  What  a  sorrowful  act  must 
that  be,  —  the  covering  up  of  wells  !  coincident  with  the 
opening  of  wells  of  tears.  These  cellar  dents,  like  de- 
eertod  fox  burrows,  old  holes,  are  all  that  is  left  where 
once  were  the  stir  and  bustle  of  human  life,  and  "  fate, 


FORMER    INHABITANTS. 

free-will,  foreknowledge  absolute,"  in  some  form  and  di 
alect  or  other  were  by  turns  discussed.  But  all  I  can 
learn  of  their  conclusions  amounts  to  just  this,  that 
"  Cato  and  Brister  pulled  wool ; "  which  is  about  as  edi 
fying  as  the  history  of  more  famous  schools  of  philos* 
opby. 

Still  grows  the  vivacious  lilac  a  generation  after  the 
door  and  lintel  and  the  sill  are  gone,  unfolding  its  sweet- 
scented  flowers  each  spring,  to  be  plucked  by  the  mus 
ing  traveller ;  planted  and  tended  once  by  children's 
hands,  in  front-yard  plots,  —  now  standing  by  wall-sides 
in  retired  pastures,  and  giving  place  to  new-rising  for 
ests  ;  —  the  last  of  that  stirp,  sole  survivor  of  that  fam 
ily.  Little  did  the  dusky  children  think  that  the  puny 
slip  with  its  two  eyes  only,  which  they  stuck  in  the 
ground  in  the  shadow  of  the  house  and  daily  watered, 
would  root  itself  so,  and  outlive  them,  and  house  itself 
in  the  rear  that  shaded  it,  and  grown  man's  garden 
and  orchard,  and  tell  their  story  faintly  to  the  lone 
wanderer  a  half  century  after  they  had  grown  up  and 
died,  —  blossoming  as  fair,  and  smelling  as  sweet,  as  in 
that  first  spring.  I  mark  its  still  tender,  civil,  cheerful, 
lilac  colors. 

But  this  small  village,  germ  of  something  more,  why 
did  it  fail  while  Concord  keeps  its  ground  ?  Were  there 
no  natural  advantages,  —  no  water  privileges,  forsooth  ? 
Ay,  the  deep  Walden  Pond  and  cool  Brister's  Spring,  — 
privilege  to  drink  long  and  healthy  draughts  at  these, 
all  unimproved  by  these  men  but  to  dilute  their  glass. 
They  were  universally  a  thirsty  race.  Might  not  the 
basket,  stable-broom,  mat-making,  corn-parching,  linen- 
spinnmg,  and  pottery  business  have  thrived  here, 
making  the  wilderness  to  blossoir  like  the  rose,  and  a 


284  WALDEN. 

numerous  posterity  have  .inherited  the  land  wf  their 
fathers  ?  The  sterile  soil  would  at  least  have  been 
proof  against  a  low-land  degeneracy.  Alas  !  how  little 
does  the  memory  of  these  human  inhabitants  enhance 
the  beauty  of  the  landscape !  Again,  perhaps,  Nature 
will  try,  with  me  for  a  first  settler,  and  my  house  raised 
last  spring  to  be  the  oldest  in  the  hamlet. 

I  am  not  aware  that  any  man  has  ever  built  on  the 
spot  which  I  occupy.  Deliver  me  from  a  city  built  on 
the  site  of  a  more  ancient  city,  whose  materials  are 
ruins,  whose  gardens  cemeteries.  The  soil  is  blanched 
and  accursed  there,  and  before  that  becomes  necessary 
the  earth  itself  will  be  destroyed.  With  such  reminis 
cences  I  repeopled  the  woods  and  lulled  myself  asleep. 


At  this  season  I  seldom  had  a  visitor.  When  the 
snow  lay  deepest  no  wanderer  ventured  near  my  house 
for  a  week  or  fortnight  at  a  time,  but  there  I  lived  as 
snug  as  a  meadow  mouse,  or  as  cattle  and  poultry  which 
are  said  to  have  survived  for  a  long  time  buried  in 
drifts,  even  without  food ;  or  like  that  early  settler's  fam 
ily  in  the  town  of  Button,  in  this  state,  whose  cottage 
was  completely  covered  by  the  great  snow  of  1717 
when  he  was  absent,  and  an  Indian  found  it  only  by  the 
hole  which  the  chimney's  breath  made  in  the  drift,  and 
so  relieved  the  family.  But  no  friendly  Indian  con 
cerned  himself  about  me  ;  nor  needed  he,  for  the  master 
of  the  house  was  at  home.  The  Great  Snow !  How 
cheerful  It  is  to  hear  of !  When  the  farmers  could  not 
get  to  the  woods  and  swamps  with  their  teams,  and 
were  obliged  to  cut  down  the  shade  trees  before  their 
bouses,  and  when  the  crust  was  harder  cut  off  the  trees 


WINTER    VISITORS.  285 

in  the  swamps  ten  feet  from  the  ground,  as  it  appeared 
the  next  spring. 

In  the  deepest  snows,  the  path  which  I  used  from 
the  highway  to  my  house,  about  half  a  mile  long,  might 
have  been  represented  by  a  meandering  dotted  line, 
with  wide  intervals  between  the  dots.  For  a  week  of 
even  weather  I  took  exactly  the  same  number  of  steps, 
and  of  the  same  length,  coming  and  going,  stepping  de 
liberately  and  with  the  precision  of  a  pair  of  dividers  in 
my  own  deep  tracks,  —  to  such  routine  the  winter  re 
duces  us,  —  yet  often  they  were  filled  with  heaven's 
own  blue.  But  no  weather  interfered  fatally  with  my 
walks,  or  rather  my  going  abroad,  for  I  frequently 
tramped  eight  or  ten  miles  through  the  deepest  snow  to 
keep- an  appointment  writh  a  beech-tree,  or  a' yellow- 
birch,  or  an  old  acquaintance  among  the  pines ;  when 
the  ice  and  snow  causing  their  limbs  to  droop,  and  so 
sharpening  their  tops,  had  changed  the  pines  into  fir- 
trees  r  wading  to  the  tops  of  the  highest  hills  when  the 
snow  was  nearly  two  feet  deep  on  a  level,  and  shaking 
down  another  snow-storm  on  my  head  at  every  step  ; 
or  sometimes  creeping  and  floundering  thither  on  my 
hands  and  knees,  when  the  hunters  had  gone  into  winter 
quarters.  One  afternoon  I  amused  myself  by  watching 
a  barred  owl  (Strix  nebulosa)  sitting  on  one  of  the 
lower  dead  limbs  of  a  white-pine,  close  to  the  trunk,  in 
broad  daylight,  I  standing  within  a  rod  of  him.  He 
could  hear  me  when  I  moved  and  cronched  the  snow 
with  my  feet,  but  could  not  plainly  see  me.  When  I 
mads  most  noise  he  would  stretch  out  his  neck,  and  erect 
his  neck  feathers,  and  open  his  eyes  wide ;  but  their  lids 
soon  fell  again,  and  he  began  to  nod.  I  too  felt  a  slum- 
be^ous  influence  after  watching  him  half  an  hour,  as  he 


286  WALDEtf. 

sat  thus  with  his  eyes  half  open,  like  a  cat,  winged 
brother  of  the  cat.  There  was  only  a  narrow  slit  left 
between  their  lids,  by  which  he  preserved  a  peninsular 
relation  to  me  ;  thus,  with  half-shut  eyes,  looking  out 
from  the  land  of  dreams,  and  endeavoring  to  realize  me, 
vague  object  or  mote  that  interrupted  his  visions.  At 
length,  on  some  louder  noise  or  my  nearer  approach,  he 
would  grow  uneasy  and  sluggishly  turn  about  on  his 
perch,  as  if  impatient  at  having  his  dreams  disturbed ; 
and  when  he  launched  himself  off  and  flapped  through  the 
pines,  spreading  his  wings  to  unexpected  breadth,  I  could 
not  hear  the  slightest  sound  from  them.  Thus,  guided 
amid  the  pine  boughs  rather  by  a  delicate  sense  of  their 
neighborhood  than  by  sight,  feeling  his  twilight  way  as  it 
were  with  his  sensitive  pinions,  he  found  a  new  perch, 
where  he  might  in  peace  await  the  dawning  of  his  day. 
As  I  walked  over  the  long  causeway  made  for  the 
railroad  through  the  meadows,  I  encountered  many  a 
blustering  and  nipping  wind,  for  nowhere  has  it-  freer 
play  ;  and  when  the  frost  had  smitten  me  on  one  cheek, 
heathen  as  I  was,  I  turned  to  it  the  other  also.  Nor 
was  it  much  better  by  the  carriage  road  from  Brister's 
Hill.  For  I  came  to  town  still,  like  a  friendly  Indian, 
when  the  contents  of  the  broad  open  fields  were  all 
piled  up  between  the  walls  of  the  Walden  road,  and 
half  an  hour  sufficed  to  obliterate  the  tracks  of  the  last 
traveller.  And  when  I  returned  new  drifts  would  have 
formed,  through  which  I  floundered,  where  the  busy 
north-west  wind  had  been  depositing  the  powdery  snow 
round  a  sharp  angle  in  the  road,  and  not  a  rabbit's  track, 
nor  even  the  fine  print,  the  small  type,  of  a  meadow 
mouse  was  to  be  seen.  Yet  I  rarely  failed  to  find,  even 
in  mid-winter,  some  warm  and  springy  swamp  where 


WIN1ER    VISITORS.  287 

the  glass  and  the  skunk-cabbage  still  put  forth  with 
perennial  verdure,  and  some  hardier  bird  occasionally 
awaited  the  return  of  spring. 

Sometimes,  notwithstanding  the  snow,  when  I  re 
turned  from  my  walk  at  evening  I  crossed  the  deop 
tracks  of  a  woodchopper  leading  from  my  door,  and  found 
his  pile  of  whittlings  on  the  hearth,  and  my  house  filled 
with  the  odor  of  his  pipe.  Or  on  a  Sunday  afternoon, 
if  I  chanced  to  be  at  home,  I  heard  the  cronching  of 
the  snow  made  by  the  step  of  a  long-headed  farmer 
who  from  far  through  the  woods  sought  my  house,  to 
have  a  social  "  crack ; "  one  of  the  few  of  his  vocation 
who  are  "  men  on  their  farms  ; "  who  donned  a  frock  in 
stead  of  a  professor's  gown,  and  is  as  ready  to  extiact 
the  moral  out  of  church  or  state  as  to  haul  a  load  of 
manure  from  his  barn-yard.  We  talked  of  rude  and 
simple  times,  when  men  sat  about  large  fires  in  cold 
bracing  weather,  with  clear  heads ;  and  when  other  des 
sert  failed,  we  tried  our  teeth  on  many  a  nut  which  wise 
squirrels  have  long  since  abandoned,  for  those  which 
have  the  thickest  shells  are  commonly  empty. 

The  one  who  came  from  farthest  to  my  lodge,  through 
deepest  snows  and  most  dismal  tempests,  was  a  poet. 
A  farmer,  a  hunter,  a  soldier,  a  reporter,  even  a  philoso 
pher,  may  be  daunted ;  but  nothing  can  deter  a  poet,  for 
he  is  actuated  by  pure  love.  Who  can  predict  his 
comings  and  goings  ?  His  business  calls  him  out  at  all 
hours,  even  when  doctors  sleep.  We  made  that  small 
house  ring  with  boisterous  mirth  and  resound  with  the 
murmur  of  much  sober  talk,  making  amends  then  to 
Walden  vale  for  the  long  silences.  Broadway  was  still 
and  deserted  in  comparison.  At  suitable  intervals  there 
were  regular  salutes  of  laughter,  which  might  have 


288 


been  referred  indifferently  to  the  last  uttered  or  tlie 
forth-coming  jest.  We  made  many  a  "bran  new "  theory 
of  life  over  a  thin  dish  of  gruel,  which  combined  the 
advantages  of  conviviality  with  the  clear-headedness 
which  philosophy  requires. 

I  should  not  forget  that  during  my  last  winter  at  the 
pond  there  was  another  welcome  visitor,  who  at  one 
time  came  through  the  village,  through  snow  and  rain 
and  darkness,  till  he  saw  my  lamp  through  the  trees, 
and  shared  with  me  some  long  winter  evenings.  One 
of  the  last  of  the  philosophers,  —  Connecticut  gave  him  to 
the  world,  —  he  peddled  first  her  wares,  afterwards,  as  he 
declares,  his  brains.  These  he  peddles  still,  prompting 
God  and  disgracing  man,  bearing  for  fruit  his  brain  only, 
like  the  nut  its  kernel.  I  think  that  he  must  be  the 
man  of  the  most  faith  of  any  alive.  His  words  and 
attitude  always  suppose  a  better  state  of  things  than 
other  men  are  acquainted  with,  and  he  will  be  the  last 
man  to  be  disappointed  as  the  ages  revolve.  He  has  no 
venture  in  the  present.  But  though  comparatively  dis 
regarded  now,  when  his  day  comes,  laws  unsuspected  by 
most  will  take  effect,  and  masters  of  families  and  rulers 
will  come  to  him  for  advice. — 

"  How  blind  that  cannot  see  serenity  !  " 

A  true  friend  of  man  ;  almost  the  only  friend  of  hu< 
man  progress.  An  Old  Mortality,  say  rather  an  Immor 
tality,  with  unwearied  patience  and  faith  making  plain 
the  image  engraven  in  men's  bodies,  the  God  of  whom 
they  are  but  defaced  and  leaning  monuments.  With 
his  hospitable  intellect  he  embraces  children,  beggars, 
insane,  and  scholars,  and  entertains  the  thought  of  all, 
adding  to  it  commonly  some  breadth  and  elegance.  I 


WINTER    VISITOK3.  289 

think  that  he  should  keep  a  caravansary  on  the  world's 
highway,  where  philosophers  of  all  nations  might  put 
up,  and  on  his  sign  should  be  printed,  "  Entertainment 
for  man,  but  not  for  his  beast.  Enter  ye  that  have  lei 
sure  and  a  quiet  mind,  who  earnestly  seek  the  right  road." 
He  is  perhaps  the  sanest  man  and  has  the  fewest 
crotchets  of  any  I  chance  to  know ;  the  same  yester 
day  and  to-morrow.  Of  yore  we  had  sauntered  and 
talked,  and  effectually  put  the  world  behind  us ;  for  he 
was  pledged  to  no  institution  in  it,  freeborn,  ingenuus. 
Whichever  way  we  turned,  it  seemed  that  the  heavens 
and  the  earth  had  met  together,  since  he  enhanced  the 
beauty  of  the  landscape.  A  blue-robed  man,  whose 
fittest  roof  is  the  overarching  sky  which  reflects  his 
serenity.  I  do  not  see  how  he  can  ever  die ;  Nature 
cannot  spare  him. 

Having  each  some  shingles  of  thought  well  dried,  we 
sat  and  whittled  them,  trying  our  knives,  and  admiring 
the  clear  yellowish  grain  of  the  pumpkin  pine.  We 
waded  so  gently  and  reverently,  or  we  pulled  together 
so  smoothly,  that  the  fishes  of  thought  were  not 
scared  from  the  stream,  nor  feared  any  angler  on  the 
bank,  but  came  and  went  grandly,  like  the  clouds  which 
float  through  the  western  sky,  and  the  mother-o'-pearl 
flocks  which  sometimes  form  and  dissolve  there.  There 
we  worked,  revising  mythology,  rounding  a  fable  here 
and  there,  and  building  castles  in  the  air  for  which 
earth  offered  no  worthy  foundation.  Great  Looker! 
Great  Expecter !  to  converse  with  whom  was  a  New 
England  Night's  Entertainment.  Ah !  such  discourse 
we  had,  hermit  and  philosopher,  and  the  old  settler  I 
have  spoken  of,  —  we  three,  —  it  expanded  and  racked 
my  little  house  ;  I  should  not  dare  to  say  how  many 
19 


290  WALDEN. 

pounds'  weight  there  was  above  the  atmospheric  press 
ure  on  every  circular  inch ;  it  opened  its  seams  so  that 
they  had  to  be  calked  with  much  dulness  thereafter  to 
stop  the*  consequent  leak ;  —  but  I  had  enough  of  that 
kind  of  oakum  already  picked. 

There  was  one  other  with  whom  I  had  "  solid  sea 
sons,"  long  to  be  remembered,  at  his  house  in  the  vil 
lage,  and  who  looked  in  upon  me  from  time  to  time ;  1>u4 
I  had  no  more  for  society  there. 

There  too,  as  every  where,  I  sometimes  expected  the 
Visitor  who  never  comes.  The  Vishnu  Purana,  says, 
*'  The  house-holder  is  to  remain  at  eventide  in  nis  court 
yard  as  long  as  it  takes  to  milk  a  cow,  or  longer  if  he 
pleases,  to  await  the  arrival  of  a  guest."  1  often  per 
formed  this  duty  of  hospitality,  waited  long  enough  to 
milk  a  whole  herd  of  cows,  but  did  not  *  e  the  man 
approaching  from  the  town. 


WINTER    ANIMALS. 


WHEN  the  ponds  were  firmly  frozen,  they  afforded 
not  only  new  and  shorter  routes  to  many  points,  but 
new  views  from  their  surfaces  of  the  familiar  landscape 
around  them.  When  I  crossed  Flints'  Pond,  after  it 
was  covered  with  snow,  though  I  had  often  paddled 
about  and  skated  over  it,  it  was  so  unexpectedly  wide  and 
so  strange  that  I  could  think  of  nothing  but  Baffin's 
Bay.  The  Lincoln  hills  rose  up  around  me  at  the  ex 
tremity  of  a  snowy  plain,  in  which  I  did  not  remember 
to  have  stood  before  ;  and  the  fishermen,  at  an  indeter 
minable  distance  over  the  ice,  moving  slowly  about  with 
their  wolfish  dogs,  passed  for  sealers  or  Esquimaux,  or 
in  misty  weather  loomed  like  fabulous  creatures,  and  I 
did  not  know  whether  they  were  giants  or  pygmies. 
I  took  this  course  when  I  went  to  lecture  in  Lincoln  in 
the  evening,  travelling  in  no  road  and  passing  no  house 
between  my  own  hut  and  the  lecture  room.  In  Goose 
Pond,  which  lay  in  my  way,  a  colony  of  muskrats 
dwelt,  and  raised  their  cabins  high  above  the  ice,  though 
none  could  be  seen  abroad  when  I  crossed  it.  Walden, 
being  like  the  rest  usually  bare  of  snow,  or  with  only 

(291) 


292  WALDEN. 

shallow  and  interrupted  drifts  on  it,  was  my  yard 
where  I  could  walk  freely  when  the  snow  was  nearly 
two  feet  deep  on  a  level  elsewhere  and  the  villagers 
were  confined  to  their  streets.  There,  far  from  the  vil 
lage  street,  and  except  at  very  long  intervals,  from  the 
jingle  of  sleigh-bells,  I  slid  and  skated,  as  in  a  vast 
moose-yard  well  trodden,  overhung  by  oak  woods  and 
solemn  pines  bent  down  with  snow  or  bristling  with 
icicles. 

For  sounds  in  winter  nights,  and  often  in  winter 
days,  I  heard  the  forlorn  but  melodious  note  of  a 
hooting  owl  indefinitely  far  ;  such  a  sound  as  the 
frozen  earth  would  yield  if  struck  with  a  suitable 
plectrum,  the  very  lingua  vernacula  of  Walden  Wood, 
and  quite  familiar  to  me  at  last,  though  I  never 
saw  the  bird  while  it  was  making  it.  I  seldom  opened 
my  door  in  a  winter  evening  without  hearing  it; 
Hoo  hoo  hoo,  hoorer  hoo,  sounded  sonorously,  and  the 
first  three  syllables  accented  somewhat  like  how  der  do  ; 
or  sometimes  hoo  hoo  only.  One  night  in  the  beginning 
of  winter,  before  the  pond  froze  over,  about  nine  o'clock, 
I  was  startled  by  the  loud  honking  of  a  goose,  and,  step 
ping  to  the  door,  heard  the  sound  of  their  wings  like  a 
tempest  in  the  woods  as  they  flew  low  over  my  house. 
They  passed  over  the  pond  toward  Fair  Haven,  seem 
ingly  deterred  from  settling  by  my  light,  their  commo 
dore  honking  all  the  while  with  a  regular  beat.  Sud 
denly  an  unmistakable  cat-owl  from  very  near  me, 
with  the  most  harsh  and  tremendous  voice  I  ever  heard 
from  any  inhabitant  of  the  woods,  responded  at  regular 
intervals  to  the  goose,  as  if  determined  to  expose  and 
disgrace  this  intruder  from  Hudson's  Bay  by  exhibiting 
a  greater  compass  and  volume  of  voice  in  a  native,  and 


WINTER    ANIMALS.  293 

boo-hoo  him  out  of  Concord  horizon.  What  do  yoia 
mean  by  alarming  the  citadel  at  this  time  of  night  con 
secrated  to  me  ?  Do  you  think  I  am  ever  caught  nap 
ping  at  such  an  hour,  and  that  I  have  not  got  lungs  and 
a  larynx  as  well  as  yourself?  Boo-hoo,  boo-hoo,  boo- 
hoo  !  It  was  one  of  the  most  thrilling  discords  I  evei 
heard.  And  yet,  if  you  had  a  discriminating  ear,  there 
were  in  it  the  elements  of  a  concord  such  as  these  plains 
never  saw  nor  heard. 

I  also  heard  the  whooping  of  the  ice  in  the  pond,  my 
great  bed-fellow  in  that  part  of  Concord,  as  if  it  were 
restless  in  its  bed  and  would  fain  turn  over,  were 
troubled  with  flatulency  and  bad  dreams ;  or  I  was 
waked  by  the  cracking  of  the  ground  by  the  frost,  as  if 
some  one  had  driven  a  team  against  my  door,  and  in 
the  morning  would  find  a  crack  in  the  earth  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  long  and  a  third  of  an  inch  wide. 

Sometimes  I  heard  the  foxes  as  they  ranged  over  the 
snow  crust,  in  moonlight  nights,  in  search  of  a  partridge 
or  other  game,  barking  raggedly  and  demoniacally  like 
forest  dogs,  as  if  laboring  with  some  anxiety,  or  seeking 
expression,  struggling  for  light  and  to  be  dogs  outright 
and  run  freely  in  the  streets ;  for  if  we  take  the  ages 
into  our  account,  may  there  not  be  a  civilization  going 
on  among  brutes  as  well  as  men  ?  They  seemed  to  me 
to  be  rudimental,  burrowing  men,  still  standing  on  their 
defence,  awaiting  their  transformation.  Sometimes  one 
came  near  to  my  window,  attracted  by  my  light,  barked 
a  vulpine  curse  at  me,  and  then  retreated. 

Usually  the  red  squirrel  (Sciurus  Hudsonius)  waked 
me  in  the  dawn,  coursing  over  the  roof  and  up  and 
down  the  sides  of  the  house,  as  if  sent  out  of  the  wooda 
for  this  purpose.  In  the  course  of  the  winter  I  threw 


294  WALDEN. 

out  half  a  bushel  of  ears  of  sweet-corn,  ^hich  had  not 
got  ripe,  on  to  the  snow  crust  by  my  door,  and  was 
amused  by  watching  +he  motions  of  the  various  animals 
which  were  baited  by  it.  In  the  twilight  and  the  night 
the  rabbits  came  regularly  and  made  a  hearty  meal. 
All  day  long  the  red  squirrels  came  and  went,  and 
afforded  me  much  entertainment  bj  l  Qir  manoeuvres. 
One  would  approach  at  first  warily  throu0  'he  shrub- 
oaks,  running  over  the  snow  crust  by  fits  and  s  .arts  like 
a  leaf  blown  by  the  wind,  now  a  few  paces  this  way, 
with  wonderful  speed  and  waste  of  energy,  making  in 
conceivable  haste  with  his  "  trotters,"  as  if  it  were  for  a 
wager,  and  now  as  many  paces  that  way,  but  never  get 
ting  on  more  than  half  a  rod  at  a  time  ;  and  then  sud 
denly  pausing  with  a  ludicrous  expression  and  a  gratui 
tous  somerset,  as  if  all  the  eyes  in  the  universe  were 
fixed  on  him,  —  iVr  all  the  motions  of  a  squirrel,  even 
in  the  most  solitary  recesses  of  the  forest,  imply  specta 
tors  as  much  as  those  of  a  dancing  girl,  —  wasting  more 
time  in  delay  and  circumspection  than  would  have  suf 
ficed  to  walk  the  whole  distance,  —  I  never  saw  one 
walk,  —  and  then  suddenly,  before  you  could  say  Jack 
Robinson,  he  would  be  in  the  top  of  a  young  pitch-pine, 
winding  up  his  clock  and  chiding  all  imaginary  specta 
tors,  soliloquizing  and  talking  to  all  the  universe  at  the 
same  time,  —  for  no  reason  that  I  could  ever  detect,  or 
he  himself  was  aware  of,  I  suspect.  At  length  he 
would  reach  the  corn,  and  selecting  a  suitable  ear,  brisk 
about  in  the  same  uncertain  trigonometrical  way  to  the 
top-most  stick  of  my  wood-pile,  before  my  window, 
where  he  looked  me  in  the  face,  and  there  sit  for  hours, 
supplying  himself  with  a  new  ear  from  time  to  time, 
nibbling  al  first  voraciously  and  throwing  the  half-naked 


WINTER    ANIMALS.  295 

cobs  about ;  till  at  length  he  grew  more  dainty  still  and 
played  with  his  food,  tasting  only  the  inside  of  the  ker 
nel,  and  the  ear,  which  was  held  balanced  over  the  stick 
by  one  paw,  slipped  from  his  careless  grasp  and  fell  to 
the  ground,  when  he  would  look  over  at  it  with  a  ludi 
crous  expression  of  uncertainty,  as  if  suspecting  that  it 
had  life,  with  a  mind  not  made  up  whether  to  get  it 
again,  or  a  new  one,  or  be  off;  now  thinking  of  corn, 
then  listening  to  hear  what  was  in  the  wind.  So  the 
little  impudent  fellow  would  waste  many  an  ear  in  a 
forenoon  ;  till  at  last,  seizing  some  longer  and  plumper 
one,  considerably  bigger  than  himself,  and  skilfully  bal 
ancing  it,  he  would  set  out  with  it  to  the  woods,  like  a 
tiger  with  a  buffalo,  by  the  same  zig-zag  course  and 
frequent  pauses,  scratching  along  with  it  as  if  it  were 
too  heavy  for  him  and  falling  all  the  while,  making  its 
fall  a  diagonal  between  a  perpendicular  and  horizon 
tal,  being  determined  to  put  it  through  at  any  rate ;  — 
a  singularly  frivolous  and  whimsical  fellow ;  —  and  so 
he  would  get  off  with  it  to  where  he  lived,  perhaps 
carry  it  to  the  top  of  a  pine  tree  forty  or  fifty  rods  dis 
tant,  and  I  would  afterwards  find  the  cobs  strewn  about 
the  woods  in  various  directions. 

At  length  the  jays  arrive,  whose  discordant  screams 
were  heard  long  before,  as  they  were  warily  making 
their  approach  an  eighth  of  a  mile  off,  and  in  a  stealthy 
and  sneaking  manner  they  flit  from  tree  to  tree,  nearer 
and  nearer,  and  pick  up  the  kernels  which  the  squirrels 
have  dropped.  Then,  sitting  on  a  pitch-pine  bough, 
they  attempt  to  swallow  in  their  haste  a  kernel  which 
is  too  big  for  their  throats  and  chokes  them ;  and  after 
great  labor  tl|py  disgorge  it,  and  spend  an  hour  in 
the  endeavor  to  crack  it  by  repeated  blows  with  their 


21)6  WALDEN. 

bills.  They  were  manifestly  thieves,  and  I  had  no 
much  respect  for  them ;  but  the  squirrels,  though  at  first 
shy,  went  to  work  as  if  they  were  taking  what  was 
their  own.  % 

Meanwhile  also  came  the  chicadees  in  flocks,  which, 
picking  up  the  crums  the  squirrels  had  dropped,  flew 
to  the  nearest  twig,  and,  placing  them  under  their 
claws,  hammered  away  at  them  with  their  little  bills, 
as  if  it  were  an  insect  in  the  bark,  till  they  were 
sufficiently  reduced  for  their  slender  throats.  A  little 
flock  of  these  tit-mice  came  daily  to"  pick  a  dinner  out 
of  my  wood-pile,  or  the  crums  at  my  door,  with  faint 
flitting  lisping  notes,  like  the  tinkling  of  icicles  in  the 
grass,  or  else  with  sprightly  day  day  day,  or  more 
rarely,  in  spring-like  days,  a  wiry  summery  phe-be  from 
the  wood-side.  They  were  so  familiar  that  at  length 
one  alighted  on  an  armful  of  wood  which  I  was  carry 
ing  in,  and  pecked  at  the  sticks  without  fear.  I  once 
had  a  sparrow  alight  upon  my  shoulder  for  a  mo 
ment  while  I  was  hoeing  in  a  village  garden,  and  I  felt 
that  I  was  more  distinguished  by  that  circumstance  than 
I  should  have  been  by  any  epaulet  I  could  have  worn. 
The  squirrels  also  grew  at  last  to  be  quite  familiar,  and 
occasionally  stepped  upon  my  shoe,  when  that  was  the 
nearest  way. 

When  the  ground  was  not  yet  quite  covered,  and 
again  near  the  end  of  winter,  when  the  snow  was  melted 
on  my  south  hill-side  and  about  my  wood-pile,  the  par 
tridges  came  out  of  the  woods  morning  and  evening  to 
feed  there.  Whichever  side  you  walk  in  the  woods  the 
partridge  bursts  away  on  whirring  wings,  jarring  the 
snow  from  the  dry  leaves  and  twigs  on  high,  which 
comes  sifting  down  in  the  sun-beams  like  golden  dust 


WINTER    ANIMALS.  297 

for  tli^s  brave  bird  is  not  to  be  scared  by  winter.  It  is 
frequently  covered  up  by  drifts,  and,  it  is  said,  "  some 
times  plunges  from  on  wing  into  the  soft  snow,  where  it 
remains  concealed  for  a  day  or  two."  I  used  to  start 
them  in  the  open  land  also,  where  they  had  come  out  of 
the  woods  at  sunset  to  "bud"  the  wild  apple-trees. 
They  will  come  regularly  every  evening  to  particular 
trees,  where  the  cunning  sportsman  lies  in  wait  for  them, 
and  the  distant  orchards  next  the  woods  suffer  thus  not 
a  little.  I  am  glad  that  the  partridge  gets  fed,  at  any 
rate.  It  is  Nature's  own  bird  which  lives  on  buds  and 
diet-drink. 

In  dark  winter  mornings,  or  in  short  winter  afternoons, 
1  sometimes  heard  a  pack  of  hounds  threading  all  the 
woods  with  hounding  cry  and  yelp,  unable  to  resist  the 
instinct  of  the  chase,  and  the  note  of  the  hunting  horn 
at  intervals,  proving  that  man  was  in  the  rear.  The 
woods  ring  again,  and  yet  no  fox  bursts  forth  on  to  the 
open  level  of  the  pond,  nor  following  pack  pursuing  their 
Actaeon.  And  perhaps  at  evening  I  see  the  hunters  re 
turning  with  a  single  brush  trailing  from  their  sleigh  for 
a  trophy,  seeking  their  inn.  They  tell  me  that  if  the 
fox  would  remain  in  the  bosom  of  the  frozen  earth  he 
would  be  safe,  or  if  he  would  run  in  a  straight  line 
away  no  fox-hound  could  overtake  him ;  but,  having  left 
bis  pursuers  for  behind,  he  stops  to  rest  and  listen  till 
they  come  up,  and  when  he  runs  he  circles  round  to  his 
old  haunts,  where  the  hunters  await  him.  Sometimes, 
however,  he  will  run  upon  a  wall  many  rods,  and 
then  leap  off  far  to  one  side,  and  he  appears  to  know 
that  water  will  not  retain  his  scent.  A  hunter  told  me 
that  he  once  saw  a  fox  pursued  by  hounds  burst  out  on 
to  Walden  when  the  ice  was  covered  with  shallow  pud* 


298  WALDEN. 

dies,  fun  part  way  across,  and  then  return  to  the  same 
shore.  Ere  long  the  hounds  arrived,  but  here  they  lost 
the  scent.  Sometimes  a  pack  hunting  by  themselves 
would  pass  my  door,  and  circle  round  my  house,  and 
yelp  and  hound  without  regarding  me,  as  if  afflicted 
by  a  species  of  madness,  so  that  nothing  could  diver* 
them  from  the  pursuit.  Thus  they  circle  until  they  faP 
upon  the  recent  trail  of  a  fox,  for  a  wise  hound  will  for 
sake  every  thing  else  for  this.  One  day  a  man  came  t<? 
my  hut  from  Lexington  to  inquire  after  his  hound  that 
made  a  large  track,  and  had  been  hunting  for  a  week 
by  himself.  But  I  fear  that  he  was  not  the  wiser  for 
all  I  told  him,  for  every  time  I  attempted  to  answer  his 
questions  he  interrupted  me  by  asking,  "  What  do  you 
do  here  ?  "  He  had  lost  a  dog,  but  found  a  man. 

One  old  hunter  who  has  a  dry  tongue,  who  used  to 
come  to  bathe  in  Walden  once  every  year  when  the 
water  was  warmest,  and  at  such  times  looked  in  upon 
me,  told  me,  that  many  years  ago  he  took  his  gun  one 
afternoon  and  went  out  for  a  cruise  in  Walden  Wood ; 
and  as  he  walked  the  Way  land  road  he  heard  the  cry 
of  hounds  approaching,  and  ere  long  a  fox  leaped  the  wall 
into  the  road,  and  as  quick  as  thought  leaped  the  other 
wall  out  of  the  road,  and  his  swift  bullet  had  not  touched 
him.  Some  way  behind  came  an  old  hound  and  her 
three  pups  in  full  pursuit,  hunting  on  their  own  account, 
and  disappeared  again  in  the  woods.  Late  in  the 
afternoon,  as  he  was  resting  in  the  thick  woods  south  of 
Walden,  he  heard  the  voice  of  the  hounds  far  over 
toward  Fair  Haven  still  pursuing  the  fox ;  and  on  they 
came,  their  hounding  cry  which  made  all  the  woods  ring 
Bounding  nearer  and  nearer,  now  from  Well-Meadow, 
cow  from  the  Baker  Farm.  For  a  long  time  he  stood 


WINTER    ANIMALS.  299 

still  and  lisjened  to  their  music,  so  sweet  to  a  hunter's 
ear,  when  suddenly  the  fox  appeared,  threading  the 
solemn  aisles  with  an  easy  coursing  pace,  whose  sound 
was  concealed  by  a  sympathetic  rustle  of  the  leaves, 
swift  and  still,  keeping  the  ground,  leaving  his  pursuers 
far  behind ;  and,  leaping  upon  a  rock  amid  the  woods,  he 
sat  erect  and  listening,  with  his  back  to  the  hunter.  For 
a  moment  compassion  restrained  the  latter's  arm ;  but 
that  was  a  short-  lived  mood,  and  as  quick  as  thought  can 
follow  thought  his  piece  was  levelled,  and  whang! — • 
the  fox  rolling  over  the  rock  lay  dead  on  the  ground. 
The  hunter  still  kept  his  place  and  listened  to  the  hounds. 
Still  on  they  came,  and  now  the  near  woods  resounded 
through  all  their  aisles  with  their  demoniac  cry.  At 
length  the  old  hound  burst  into  view  with  muzzle  to  the 
ground,  and  snapping  the  air  as  if  possessed,  and  ran  di 
rectly  to  the  rock ;  but  spying  the  dead  fox  she  suddenly 
ceased  her  hounding,  as  if  struck  dumb  with  amaze 
ment,  and  walked  round  and  round  him  in  silence ;  and 
one  by  one  her  pups  arrived,  and,  like  their  mother,  were 
sobered  into  silence  by  the  mystery.  Then  the  hunter 
came  forward  and  stood  in  their  midst,  and  the  mystery 
was  solved.  They  waited  in  silence  while  he  skinned 
the  fox,  then  followed  the  brush  a  while,  and  at  length 
turned  off  into  the  woods  again.  That  evening  a  Wes- 
ton  Squire  came  to  the  Concord  hunter's  cottage  to  in 
quire  for  his  hounds,  and  told  how  for  a  week  they  had 
been  hunting  on  their  own  account  from  Weston  woods. 
The  Concord  hunter  told  him  what  he  knew  and  offe  red 
him  the  skin ;  but  the  other  declined  it  and  departed. 
He  did  not  find  his  hounds  that  night,  but  the  next  day 
learned  that  they  had  crossed  the  river  and  put  up  at  a 


300  WALDEN. 

farm-house  for  the  night,  whence,  having  been  well  fed, 
they  took  their  departure  early  in  the  morning. 

The  hunter  who  told  me  this  could  remember  ono 
Sam  Nutting,  who  used  to  hunt  bears' on  Fair  Haven 
Ledges,  and  exchange  their  skins  for  rum  in  Concord 
village ;  who  told  him,  even,  that  he  had  seen  a  moose 
there.  Nutting  had  a  famous  fox-hound  named  Burgoyne, 
—  he  pronounced  it  Bugine,  —  which  my  informant  used 
to  borrow.  In  the  "  Wast  Book  "  of  an  old  trader  of  this 
town,  who  was  also  a  captain,  trwn-clerk,  and  represen 
tative,  I  find  the  following  entry.  Jan.  18th,  1742-3, 
"  John  Melven  Cr.  by  1  Grey  Fox  0  —  2  —  3  ;  "  they 
are  not  now  found  here ;  and  in  his  leger,  Feb.  7th, 
1743,  Hezekiah  Stratton  has  credit  "by  h  a  Catt  skin 
0  —  1  —  4£  ;  "  of  course,  a  wild-cat,  for  Stratton  was  a 
sergeant  in  the  old  French  war,  and  would  not  have  got 
credit  for  hunting  less  noble  game.  Credit  is  given  for 
deer  skins  also,  and  they  were  daily  sold.  One  man  still 
preserves  the  horns  of  the  last  deer  that  was  killed  in 
this  vicinity,  and  another  has  told  me  the  particulars  of 
the  hunt  in  which  his  uncle  was  engaged.  The  hunters 
were  formerly  a  numerous  and  merry  crew  here.  I  re 
member  well  one  gaunt  Nimrod  who  would  catch  up  a 
leaf  by  the  road-side  and  play  a  strain  on  it  wilder  and 
more  melodious,  if  my  memory  serves  me,  than  any 
hunting  horn. 

At  midnight,  when  there  was  a  moon,  I  sometimes 
met  with  hounds  in  my  path  prowling  about  the  woods, 
which  would  skulk  out  of  my  way,  as  if  afraid,  and 
stand  silent  amid  the  bushes  till  I  had  passed. 

Squirrels  and  wild  mice  disputed  for  my  store  of  nuts. 
There  were  scores  of  pitch-pines  around  my  house,  from 


WINTER    ANIMALS.  301 

one  to  four  Inches  in  diameter,  which  had  been  gnawed 
by  mice  the  previous  winter,  —  a  Norwegian  winter  for 
them,  for  the  snow  lay  long  and  deep,  and  they  were 
obliged  to  mix  a  large  proportion  of  pine  bark  with  their 
other  diet.  These  trees  were  alive  and  apparently  flour 
ishing  at  mid-summer,  and  many  of  them  had  grown  a 
foot,  though  completely  girdled ;  but  after  another  win 
ter  such  were  without  exception  dead.  It  is  remarka 
ble  that  a  single  mouse  should  thus  be  allowed  a  whole 
pine  tree  for  its  dinner,  gnawing  round  instead  of  up  and 
down  it;  but  perhaps  it  is  necessary  in  order  to  thin 
these  trees,  which  are  wont  to  grow  up  densely. 

The  hares  (JLepus  Americanus]  were  very  familiar.. 
One  had  her  form  under  my  house  all  winter,  separated 
from  me  only  by  the  flooring,  and  she  startled  me  each 
morning  by  her  hasty  departure  when  I  began  to  stir,  — 
thump,  thump,  thump,  striking  her  head  against  the  floor 
timbers  in  her  hurry.  They  used  to  come  round  my 
door  at  dusk  to  nibble  the  potato  parings  which  I  had 
thrown  out,  and  were  so  nearly  the  color  of  the  ground 
that  they  could  hardly  be  distinguished  when  still. 
Sometimes  in  the  twilight  I  alternately  lost  and  recov 
ered  sight  of  one  sitting  motionless  under  my  window. 
When  I  opened  my  door  in  the  evening,  off  they  would 
go  with  a  squeak  and  a  bounce.  Near  at  hand  they 
only  excited  my  pity.  One  evening  one  sat  by  my  door 
two  paces  from  me,  at  first  trembling  with  fear,  yet  un 
willing  to  move ;  a  poor  wee  thing,  lean  and  bony,  with 
ragged  ears  and  sharp  nose,  scant  tail  and  slender  paws. 
It  looked  as  if  Nature  no  longer  contained  the  breed  of 
nobler  bloods,  but  stood  on  her  last  toes.  Its  large  eyes 
appeared  young  and  unhealthy,  almost  dropsical.  I 
*-ook  a  step,  and  lo,  away  it  scud  \v..h  an  elastic  spring 


302  WALDEN. 

over  the  snow  crust,  straightening  its  body  and  its  limbs 
into  graceful  length,  and  soon  put  the  forest  between  me 
and  itself,  —  the  wild  free  venison,  asserting  its  vigor 
and  the  dignity  of  Nature.  Not  without  reason  was  its 
elenderness.  Such  then  was  its  nature.  (Lepus,  levipes, 
ligLt-foot,  some  think.) 

What  is  a  country  without  rabbits  and  partridges  ? 
They  are  among  the  most  simple  and  indigenous  animal 
products ;  ancient  and  venerable  families  known  to  an 
tiquity  as  to  modern  times  ;  of  the  very  hue  and  sub 
stance  of  Nature,  nearest  allied  to  leaves  and  to  the 
ground,  —  and  to  one  another ;  it  is  either  winged  or  it 
is  legged.  It  is  hardly  as  if  you  had  seen  a  wild  crea 
ture  when  a  rabbit  or  a  partridge  bursts  away,  only  a 
natural  one,  as  much  to  be  expected  as  rustling  leaves. 
The  partridge  and  the  rabbit  are  still  sure  to  thrive, 
like  true  natives  of  the  soil,  whatever  revolutions  occur. 
If  the  forest  is  cut  off,  the  sprouts  and  bushes  which 
spring  up  afford  them  concealment,  and  they  become 
more  numerous  than  ever.  That  must  be  a  poor  coun 
try  indeed  that  does  not  support  a  hare.  Our  woods 
teem  with  them  both,  and  around  every  swamp  may  be 
seen  the  partridge  or  rabbit  walk,  beset  with  twiggy 
fences  and  hors^-hair  snares,  which  some  cow-boy  U  nds. 


THE    POND    IN    WINTER. 


AFTER  a  still  winter  night  I  awoke  with  the  impres 
sion  that  some  question  had  been  put  to  me,  which  I 
had  been  endeavoring  in  vain  to  answer  in  my  sleep,  as 
what-— how — when  —  where?  But  there  was  dawning 
Natu-e,  in  whom  all  creatures  live,  looking  in  at  my 
broad  windows  with  serene  and  satisfied  face,  and  no 
question  on  her  lips.  I  awoke  to  an  answered  question, 
to  Nature  and  daylight.  The  snow  lying  deep  on  the 
earth  dotted  with  young  pines,  and  the  very  slope  of  the 
hill  en  which  my  house  is  placed,  seemed  to  say,  For 
ward!  Nature  puts  no  question  and  answers  none 
which  we  mortals  ask,  She  has  long  ago  taken  her 
resolution.  "  0  Prince,  our  eyes  contemplate  with  ad 
miration  and  transmit  to  the  soul  the  wonderful  and  va 
ried  spectacle  of  this  universe.  The  night  veils  without 
doub',  a  part  of  this  glorious  creation ;  but  day  comes  to 
reveal  to  us  this  great  work,  which  extends  from  earth 
GVP D.  into  the  plains  of  the  ether." 

IJKn  to  my  morning  work.  First  I  take  an  axe  and 
pall  fjid  go  in  search  of  water,  if  that  be  not  a  dream.' 
After  ^  <  old  and  snowy  night  it  needed  a  divining  rod 

(303) 


304  WALDEN. 

to  find  it.  Every  winter  the  liquid  and  trembling 
surface  of  the  pond,  which  was  so  sensitive  to  every 
breath,  and  reflected  every  light  and  shadow,  becomes 
solid  to  the  depth  of  a  foot  or  a  foot  and  a  half,  so  that 
it  will  support  the  heaviest  teams,  and  perchance  the 
snow  covers  it  to  an  equal  depth,  and  it  is  not  to  be  dis 
tinguished  from  any  level  field.  Like  the  marmots  in 
the  surrounding  hills,  it  closes  its  eye-lids  and  becomes 
dormant  for  three  months  or  more.  Standing  on  the 
snow-covered  plain,  as  if  in  a  pasture  amid  the  hills,  I 
cut  my  way  first  through  a  foot  of  snow,  and  then  a  foot 
of  ice,  and  open  a  window  under  my  feet,  where,  kneel 
ing  to  drink,/!  look  down  into  the  quiet  parlor  of  the 
fishes,  pervaded  by  a  softened  light  as  through  a  win 
dow  of  ground  glass,  with  its  bright  sanded  floor  the 
same  as  in  summer ;  there  a  perennial  waveless  seren 
ity  reigns  as  in  the  amber  twilight  sky,  corresponding 
to  the  cool  and  even  temperament  of  the  inhabitants. 
Heaven  is  under  our  feet  as  well  as  over  our  heads. 
Early  in  the  morning,  while  all  things  are  crisp  with 
frost,  men  come  with  fishing  reels  and  slender  lunch, 
and  let  down  their  fine  lines  through  the  snowy  field  to 
take  pickerel  and  perch ;  wild  men,  who  instinctively  fol 
low  other  fashions  and  trust  other  authorities  than  their 
townsmen,  and  by  their  goings  and  comings  stitch  towns 
together  in  parts  where  else  they  would  be  ripped. 
They  sit  and  eat  their  luncheon  in  stout  fear-naughts  on 
the  dry  oak  leaves  on  the  shore,  as  wise  in  natural  lore 
as  the  citizen  is  in  artificial.  They  never  consulted 
with  books,  and  know  and  can  tell  much  less  than  they 
have  done.  The  things  which  they  practise  are  said 
•not  yet  to  be  known.  Here  is  one  fishing  for  pickerel 
with  grown  prrch  for  bait.  You  look  into  his  pail  with 


THE    POND    IN    WINTER.  305 

wonder  as  into  a  summer  pond,  as  if  he  kept  summer 
locked  up  at  home,  or  knew  where  she  had  retreated. 
How,  pray,  did  he  get  these  in  mid- winter  ?  O,  he  got 
worms  out  of  rotten  logs  since  the  ground  froze,  and  so 
he  caught  them.  His  life  itself  passes  deeper  in  Nature 
than  the  studies  of  the  naturalist  penetrate  ;  himself  a 
subject  for  the  naturalist.  The  latter  raises  the  moss 
and  bark  gently  with  his  knife  in  search  of  insects ;  the 
former  lays  open  logs  to  their  core  with  his  axe,  and 
moss  and  bark  fly  far  and  wide.  He  gets  his  living  by 
barking  trees.  Such  a  man  has  some  right  to  fish,  and 
I  love  to  see  Nature  carried  out  in  him.  The  perch 
swallows  the  grub-worm,  the  pickerel  swallows  the 
perch,  and  the  lisherman  swallows  the  pickerel ;  and  so 
all  the  chinks  in  the  scale  of  being  are  filled. 

When  I  strolled  around  the  pond  in  misty  weather  I 
was  sometimes  amused  by  the  primitive  mode  which 
some  ruder  fisherman  had  adopted.  He  would  perhaps 
have  placed  alder  branches  over  the  narrow  holes  in 
the  ice,  which  were  four  or  five  rods  apart  and  an  equal 
distance  from  the  shore,  and  having  fastened  the  end  of 
the  line  to  a  stick  to  prevent  its  being  pulled  through, 
have  passed  the  slack  line  over  a  twig  of  the  alder,  a 
foot  or  more  above  the  ice,  and  tied  a  dry  oak  leaf  to  it, 
which,  being  pulled  down,  would  show  when  he  had  a 
bite.  These  alders  loomed  through  the  mist  at  regular 
intervals  as  you  walked  half  way  round  the  pond. 

Ah,  the  pickerel  of  Walden !  when  I  see  them  lying 
on  the  ice,  or  in  the  well  which  the  fisherman  cuts  in 
the  ice,  making  a  little  hole  to  admit  the  water,  1  am 
always  surprised  by  their  rare  beauty,  as  if  they  were 
fabulous  fishes,  they  are  so  foreign  to  the  streets,  even 
to  the  woods,  foreign  as  Arabia  to  our  Concord  life 
20 


306  WALDEN. 

They  possess  a  quite  dazzling  and  transcendent  beauty 
which  separates  them  by  a  wide  interval  from  the  ca 
daverous  cod  and  haddock  whose  fame  is  trumpeted  in 
our  streets.  They  are  not  green  like  the  pines,  nor  gray 
like  the  stones,  nor  blue  like  the  sky ;  but  they  have,  to 
my  eyes,  if  possible,  yet  rarer  colors,  like  flowers  and 
precious  stones,  as  if  they  were  the  pearls,  the  animal- 
ized  nuclei  or  crystals  of  the  Walden  water.  They,  of 
course,  are  Walden  all  over  and  all  through  ;  are  them 
selves  small  Waldens  in  the  animal  kingdom,  Wal- 
denses.  It  is  surprising  that  they  are  caught  here, — 
that  in  this  deep  and  capacious  spring,  far  beneath  the 
rattling  teams  and  chaises  and  tinkling  sleighs  that  trav 
el  the  Walden  road,  this  great  gold  and  emerald  fish 
swims.  I  never  chanced  to  see  its  kind  in  any  market ; 
it  would  be  the  cynosure  of  all  eyes  there.  Easily,  with 
a  few  convulsive  quirks,  they  give  up  their  watery 
ghosts,  like  a  mortal  translated  before  his  time  to  the 
thin  air  of  heaven. 


As  I  was  desirous  to  recover  the  long  lost  bottom  of 
Walden  Pond,  I  surveyed  it  carefully,  before  the  ice 
broke  up,  early  in  '46,  with  compass  and  chain  and 
sounding  line.  There  have  been  many  stories  told 
about  the  bottom,  or  rather  no  bottom,  of  this  pond, 
which  certainly  had  no  foundation  for  themselves.  It 
is  remarkable  how  long  men  will  believe  in  the  bottorn- 
lessness  of  a  pond  without  taking  the  trouble  to  sound  it. 
I  have  visited  two  such  Bottomless  Ponds  in  one  walk 
in  this  neighborhood.  Many  have  believed  that  Walden 
reached  quite  through  to  the  other  side  of  the  globe, 
Some  who  have  lain  flat  on  the  ice  for  a  long  time,  look- 


THE    POND    IN    WINTER.  307 

ing  down  through  the  illusive  medium,  perchance  with 
watery  eyes  into  the  bargain,  and  driven  to  hasty  con 
clusions  by  the  fear  of  catching  cold  in  their  breasts, 
have  seen  vast  holes  "into  which  a  load  of  hay  might 
be  driven,"  if  there  were  any  body  to  drive  it,  the  un 
doubted  source  of  the  Styx  and  entrance  to  the  Infernal 
Regions  from  these  parts.  Others  have  gone  down 
from  the  village  with  a  u  fifty -six  "  and  a  wagon  load  of 
inch  rope,  but  yet  have  failed  to  find  any  bottom ;  for 
while  the  "  fifty-six  "  was  resting  by  the  way,  they  were 
paying  out  the  rope  in  the  vain  attempt  to  fathom  their 
truly  immeasurable  capacity  for  marvellousness.  But  I 
can  assure  my  readers  that  Walden  has  a  reasonably 
tight  bottom  at  a  not  unreasonable,  though  at  an  unusual, 
depth.  I  fathomed  it  easily  with  a  cod-line  and  a  stone 
weighing  about  a  pound  and  a  half,  and  could  tell  accu 
rately  when  the  stone  left  the  bottom,  by  having  to  pull 
so  much  harder  before  the  water  got  underneath  to  help 
me.  The  greatest  depth  was  exactly  one  hundred  and 
two  feet ;  to  which  may  be  added  the  five  feet  which  it 
has  risen  since,  making  one  hundred  and  seven.  This 
is  a  remarkable  depth  for  so  small  an  area ;  yet  not  an 
inch  of  it  can  be  spared  by  the  imagination.  What  if 
all  ponds  were  shallow?  Would  it  not  react  on  the 
minds  of  men  ?  I  am  thankful  that  this  pond  was  made 
deep  and  pure  for  a  symbol.  While  men  believe  in  the 
infinite  some  ponds  will  be  thought  to  be  bottomless. 

A  factory  owner,  hearing  what  depth  I  had  found, 
thought  that  it  could  not  be  true,  for,  judging  from  his 
acquaintance  with  dams,  sand  would  not  lie  at  so  steep 
an  angle.  But  the  deepest  ponds  are  not  so  dee~)  in 
proportion  to  their  area  as  most  suppose,  and,  if  drained, 
Fould  not  leave  very  remarkable  valleys.  They  are 


308  WALDEN. 

not  like  cups  between  the  hills ;  for  this  one,  which  is  so 
unusually  deep  for  its  area,  appears  in  a  vertical  section 
through  its  centre  not  deeper  than  a  shallow  plate. 
Most  ponds,  emptied,  would  leave  a  meadow  no  more 
hollow  than  we  frequently  see.  William  Gilpin,  who  is 
so  admirable  in  all  that  relates  to  landscapes,  and  usual 
ly  so  correct,  standing  at  the  head  of  Loch  Fyne,  in 
Scotland,  which  he  describes  as  "  a  bay  of  salt  water, 
sixty  or  seventy  fathoms  deep,  four  miles  in  breadth," 
and  about  fifty  miles  long,  surrounded  by  mountains, 
observes,  "  If  we  could  have  seen  it  immediately  after 
the  diluvian  crash,  or  whatever  convulsion  of  Nature 
occasioned  it,  before  the  waters  gushed  in,  what  a  horrid 
chasm  it  must  have  appeared ! 

So  high  as  heaved  the  tumid  hills,  so  low 
Down  sunk  a  hollow  bottom,  broad,  and  deep, 
Capacious  bed  of  waters ." 

But  if,  using  the  shortest  diameter  of  Loch  Fyne,  we  ap 
ply  these  proportions  to  Walden,  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
appears  already  in  a  vertical  section  only  like  a  shallow 
plate,  it  will  appear  four  times  as  shallow.  So  much  for 
the  increased  horrors  of  the  chasm  of  Loch  Fyne  when 
emptied.  No  doubt  many  a  smiling  valley  with  its 
stretching  cornfields  occupies  exactly  such  a  "horrid 
chasm,"  from  which  the  waters  have  receded,  though  it 
requires  the  insight  and  the  far  sight  of  the  geologist 
to  convince  the  unsuspecting  inhabitants  of  this  fact. 
Often  an  inquisitive  eye  may  detect  the  shores  of  a 
primitive  lake  in  the  low  horizon  hills,  and  no  subse 
quent  elevation  of  the  plain  have  been  necessary  to 
conceal  their  history.  But  it  is  easiest,  as  they  who 
work  on  the  highways  know,  to  find  the  holl  DWS  by  the 


THE    POND    IN    WINTER.  309 

puddles  after  a  shower.  The  amount  of  it  is,  the  im 
agination,  give  it  the  least  license,  dives  deeper  and 
soars  higher  than  Nature  goes.  So,  probably,  the 
depth  of  the  ocean  will  be  fou^d  to  be  very  inconsider 
able  compared  with  its  breadth. 

As  I  sounded  through  the  ice  I  could  determine  the 
<*hape  of  the  bottom  with  greater  accuracy  than  is  pos 
sible  in  surveying  harbors  which  do  not  freeze  over,  and 
I  was  surprised  at  its  general  regularity.  In  the  deep 
est  part  there  are  several  acres  more  level  than  almost 
any  field  which  is  exposed  to  the  sun  wind  and  plough. 
In  one  instance,  on  a  line  arbitrarily  chosen,  the  depth  did 
not  vary  more  than  one  foot  in  thirty  rods ;  and  generally, 
near  the  middle,  I  could  calculate  the  variation  for  each 
one  hundred  feet  in  any  direction  beforehand  within 
three  or  four  inches.  Some  are  accustomed  to  speak  of 
deep  and  dangerous  holes  even  in  quiet  sandy  ponds 
like  this,  but  the  effect  of  water  under  these  circum 
stances  is  to  level  all  inequalities.  The  regularity  of 
the  bottom  and  its  conformity  to  the  shores  and  the 
range  of  the  neighboring  hills  were  so  perfect  that  a  dis 
tant  promontory  betrayed  itself  in  the  soundings  quite 
across  the  pond,  and  its  direction  could  be  determined 
by  observing  the  opposite  shore.  Cape  becomes  bar,  and 
plain  shoal,  and  valley  and  gorge  deep  water  and 
channel. 

When  I  had  mapped  the  pond  by  the  scale  of  ten 
rods  to  an  inch,  and  put  down  the  soundings,  more  than 
a  hundred  in  all,  I  observed  this  remarkable  coincidence. 
Having  noticed  that  the  number  indicating  the  greatest 
depth  was  apparently  in  the  centre  of  the  map,  I  laid  a 
rule  on  the  map  lengthwise,  and  then  breadthwise,,  and 
found,  to  my  surprise,  that  the  line  of  greatest  length 


310  WALDEN. 

intersected  the  line  of  greatest  breadth  exactly  at  the 
point  of  greatest  depth,  notwithstanding  that  the  mid 
die  is  so  nearly  level,  the  outline  of  the  pond  far  from 
regular,  and  the  extreme  length  and  breadth  were  got 
by  measuring  into  the  coves  ;  and  I  said  to  myself,  Who 
knows  but  this  hint  would  conduct  to  the  deepest  part  of 
the  ocean  as  well  as  of  a  pond  or  puddle  ?  Is  not  this 
the  rule  also  for  the  height  of  mountains,  regarded  as  the 
opposite  of  valleys  ?  We  know  that  a  hill  is  not  high 
est  at  its  narrowest  part. 

Of  five  coves,  three,  or  all  which  had  been  sounded, 
were  observed  to  have  a  bar  quite  across  their  mouths 
and  deeper  water  within,  so  that  the  bay  tended  to  be 
an  expansion  of  water  within  the  land  not  only  horizon 
tally  but  vertically,  and  to  form  a  basin  or  independent 
pond,  the  direction  of  the  two  capes  showing  the  course 
of  the  bar.  Every  harbor  on  the  sea-coast,  also,  has 
its  bar  at  its  entrance.  In  proportion  as  the  mouth  of 
the  cove  was  wider  compared  with  its  length,  the  water 
over  the  bar  was  deeper  compared  with  that  in  the 
basin.  Given,  then,  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  cove, 
and  the  character  of  the  surrounding  shore,  and  you 
have  almost  elements  enough  to  make  out  a  formula  for 
all  cases. 

In  order  to  see  how  nearly  I  could  guess,'  with  this 
experience,  at  the  deepest  point  in  a  pond,  by  observing 
the  outlines  of  its  surface  and  the  character  of  its  shores 
alone,  I  made  a  plan  of  White  Pond,  which  contains 
about  forty-one  acres,  and,  like  this,  has  no  island  in  it, 
nor  any  visible  inlet  or  outlet ;  and  as  the  line  of  great 
est  breadth  fell  very  near  the  line  of  least  breadth, 
where  two  opposite  capes  approached  each  other  and 
two  opposite  bays  receded,  I  ventux^ed  to  mark  a  point 


THE    POND    IN    WINTER.  .    31!i 

u  short  distance  from  tl^e  latter  line,  but  still  on  the 
line  of  greatest  length,  as  the  deepest.  The  deepest 
part  was  found  to  be  within  one  hundred  feet  of  this, 
still  farther  in  the  direction  to  which  I  had  inclined,  and 
was  only  one  foot  deeper,  namely,  sixty  feet.  Of  course, 
a  stream  running  through,  or  an  island  in  the  pond, 
would  make  the  problem  much  more  complicated. 

If  we  knew  all  the  laws  of  Nature,  we  should  need 
only  one  fact,  or  the  description  of  one  actual  phenome 
non,  to  infer  all  the  particular  results  at  that  point. 
Now  we  know  only  a  few  laws,  and  our  result  is  viti 
ated,  not,  of  course,  by  any  confusion  or  irregularity  in 
Nature,  but  by  our  ignorance  of  essential  elements  in  the 
calculation.  Our  notions  of  law  and  harmony  are  com 
monly  confined  to  those  instances  which  we  detect ;  bu» 
the  harmony  which  results  from  a  far  greater  number 
of  seemingly  conflicting,  but  really  concurring,  laws, 
which  we  have  not  detected,  is  still  more  wonderfm. 
The  particular  laws  are  as  our  points  of  view,  as,  to  the 
traveller,  a  mountain  outline  varies  with  every  step,  and 
it  has  an  infinite  number  of  profiles,  though  absolutely 
but  one  form.  Even  when  cleft  or  bored  through  it 
is  not  comprehended  in  its  entireness.- 

What  I  have  observed  of  the  pond  is  no  less  true  in 
ethics.  It  is  the  law  of  average.  Such  a  rule  of  the 
two  diameters  not  only  guides  us  toward  the  sun  in  the 
system  and  the  heart  in  man,  but  draw  lines  through 
the  length  and  breadth  of  the  aggregate  of  a  man's  par 
ticular  daily  behaviors  and  waves  of  life  into  his  coves 
and  inlets,  and  where  they  intersect  will  be  the  height 
or  depth  of  his  character.  Perhaps  we  need  oniy  to 
know  how  his  shores  trend  and  his  adjacent  coun 
try  or  circumstances,  to  infer  his  depth  and  concealed 


512  WALDEN. 

bottom.  If  he  is  surrounded  by  mountainous  circum 
stances,  an  Achillean  shore,  whose  peaks  overshad 
ow  and  are  reflected  in  his  bosom,  they  suggest  a 
corresponding  depth  in  him.  But  a  low  and  smootli 
shore  proves  him  shallow  on  that  side.  In  our  bodies, 
a  bold  projecting  brow  falls  off  to  and  indicates  a  cor 
responding  depth  of  thought.  Also  there  is  a  bar  across 
the  .entrance  of  our  every  cove,  or  particular  inclina 
tion  ;  each  is  our  harbor  for  a  season,  in  which  we  are 
detained  and  partially  land-locked.  These  inclinations 
are  not  whimsical  usually,  but  their  form,  size,  and  di 
rection  art  determined  by  the  promontories  of  the  shore, 
the  ancient  axes  of  elevation.  When  this  bar  is  gradu 
ally  increased  by  storms,  tides,  or  currents,  or  there  is  a 
subsidence  of  the  waters,  so  that  it  reaches  to  the  sur 
face,  that  which  was  at  first  but  an  inclination  in  the 
shore  in  which  a  thought  was  harbored  becomes  an 
individual  lake,  cut  off  from  the  ocean,  wherein  the 
thought  secures  its  own  conditions,  changes,  perhaps, 
from  salt  to  fresh,  becomes  a  sweet  sea,  dead  sea,  or  a 
marsh.  At  the  advent  of  each  individual  into  this  life, 
may  we  not  suppose  that  such  a  bar  has  risen  to  the 
surface  somewhere-?  It  is  true,  we  are  such  poor  navi 
gators  that  our  thoughts,  for  the  most  part,  stand  off  and 
on  upon  a  harborless  coast,  are  conversant  only  with  the 
bights  of  the  bays  of  poesy,  or  steer  for  the  public  ports 
of  entry,  and  go  into  the  dry  docks  of  science,  where 
they  merely  refit  for  this  world,  and  no  natural  currents 
concur  to  individualize  them. 

As  for  the  inlet  or  outlet  of  Walden,  I  have  not  dis 
covered  any  but  rain  and  snow  and  evaporation,  though 
perhaps,  with  a  thermometer  and  a  line,  such  places 
may  be  found,  for  where  the  water  flows  into  the  pond 


THE    FIND    IN    WINTER.  313 

it  will  probably  bo  coldest  in  summer  and  warmest  in 
winter.  When  the  ice-men  were  at  work  here  in 
'46-7,  the  cakes  sent  to  the  shore  were  one  day  rejected 
by  those  who  were  stacking  them  up  there,  not  being 
thick  enough  to  lie  side  by  side  with  the  rest ;  and  the 
cutters  thus  discovered  that  the  ice  over  a  small  space 
was  two  or  three  inches  thinner  than  elsewhere,  which 
made  them  think  that  there  was  an  inlet  there.  They 
also  showed  me  in  another  place  what  they  thought  was 
a  "leach  hole,"  through  which  the  pond  leaked  out  under 
a  hill  into  a  neighboring  meadow,  pushing  me  out  on  a 
cake  of  ice  to  see  it.  It  was  a  small  cavity  under  ten 
feet  of  water  ;  but  I  think  that  I  can  warrant  the  pond 
not  to  need  soldering  till  they  find  a  worse  leak  than 
that.  One  has  suggested,  that  if  such  a  "leach  hole" 
should  be  found,  its  connection  with  the  meadow,  if  any 
existed,  might  be  proved  by  conveying  some  colored 
powder  or  sawdust  to  the  mouth  of  the  hole,  and  then 
putting  a  strainer  over  the  spring  in  the  meadow^  which 
would  .catch  some  of  the  particles  carried  through  by 
the  current. 

While  I  was  surveying,  the  ice,  which  was  sixteen 
inches  thick,  undulated  under  a  slight  wind  like  water* 
It  is  well  known  that  a  level  cannot  be  used  on  ice.  At 
one  rod  from  the  shore  its  greatest  fluctuation,  when 
observed  by  means  of  a  level  on  land  directed  toward 
a  graduated  staff  on  the  ice,  was  three  quarters  of  an 
inch,  though  the  ice  appeared  firmly  attached  to  the 
shore.  It  was  probably  greater  in  the  middle.  Who 
knows  but  if  our  instruments  were  delicate  enough  we 
might  detect  an  undulation  in  the  crust  of  the  earth  ? 
When  two  legs  of  my  level  were  on  the  shore  and  the 
third  on  the  ice,  and  the  sights  were  directed  over  the 


314:  WALDEN. 

latter,  a  rise  or  fall  of  the  ice  of  an  almost  infinitesimal 
amount  made  a  difference  of  several  feet  on  a  tree  across 
the  pond.  "When  I  began  to  cut  holes  for  sounding, 
there  were  three  or  four  inches  of  water  on  tlie  ice  un 
der  a  deep  snow  which  had  sunk  it  thus  far ;  but  the 
water  began  immediately  to  run  into  these  holes,  and 
continued  to  run  for  two  days  in  deep  streams,  which 
wore  away  the  ice  on  every  side,  and  contributed  es 
sentially,  if  not  mainly,  to  dry  the  surface  of  the  pond ; 
for,  as  the  water  ran  in,  it  raised  and  floated  the  ice. 
This  was  somewhat  like  cutting  a  hole  in  the  bottom  of 
a  ship  to  let  the  water  out.  When  such  holes  freeze, 
and  a  rain  succeeds,  and  finally  a  new  freezing  forms  a 
fresh  smooth  ice  over  all,  it  is  beautifully  mottled  inter 
nally  by  dark  figures,  shaped  somewhat  like  a  spider's 
web,  what  you  may  call  ice  rosettes,  produced  by  tho 
channels  worn  by  the  water  flowing  from  all  sides  to  a 
centre.  Sometimes,  also,  when  the  ice  was  covered 
with  shallow  puddles,  I  saw  a  double  shadow  of  myself, 
one  standing  on  the  head  of  the  other,  one  on  the  ice, 
the  other  on  the  trees  or  hill-side. 


"While  yet  it  is  cold  January,  and  snow  and  ice  are 
thick  and  solid,  the  prudent  landlord  comes  from  the  vil 
lage  to  get  ice  to  cool  his  summer  drink ;  impressively, 
even  pathetically  wise,  to  foresee  the  heat  and  thirst  of 
July  now  in  January,  —  wearing  a  thick  coat  and  mit 
tens  !  when  so  many  things  are  not  provided  for. 
It  may  be  that  he  lays  up  no  treasures  in  this  world 
whi  ?h  will  cool  his  summer  drink  in  the  next.  He  cuts 
and  saws  the  solid  pond,  unroofs  the  house  of  fishes,  and 
carts  off  their  very  element  and  air,  held  fast  by  chaina 


TH£    POND    IN    WINTER.  315 

and  btakes  like  corded  wood,  through  the  favoring  winter 
air,  to  wintry  cellars,  to  underlie  the  summer  there.  It 
looks  like  solidified  azure,  as,  far  off,  it  is  drawn  through 
the  streets.  These  ice-cutters  are  a  merry  race,  full  of 
jest  and  sport,  and  when  I  went  among  them  they  were 
wont  to  invite  me  to  saw  pit-fashion  with  them,  I  stand 
ing  underneath. 

In  the  winter  of  '46-7  there  came  a  hundred  men 
of  Hyperborean  extraction  swoop  down  on  to  our  pond 
one  morning,  with  many  car-loads  of  ungainly-looking 
farming  tools,  sleds,  ploughs,  drill-barrows,  turf-knives, 
spades,  saws,  rakes,  and  each  man  was  armed  with  a 
double-pointed  pike-staff,  such  as  is  not  described  in 
the  ISew-England  Farmer  or  the  Cultivator.  I  did  not 
know  whether  they  had  come  to  sow  a  crop  of  winter 
rye,  or  some  other  kind  of  grain  recently  introduced 
from  Iceland.  As  I  saw  no  manure,  I  judged  that  they 
meant  to  skim  the  land,  as  I  had  done,  thinking  the  soil 
was  deep  and  had  lain  fallow  long  enough.  They  said 
that  a  gentleman  farmer,  who  was  behind  the  scenes, 
wanted  to  double  his  money,  which,  as  I  understood, 
amounted  to  half  a  million  already ;  but  in  order  to  cover 
each  one  of  his  dollars  with  another,  he  took  off  the  only 
coat,  ay,  the  skin  itself,  of  Walden  Pond  in  the  midst  of 
a  hard  winter.  They  went  to  work  at  once,  ploughing, 
harrowing,  rolling,  furrowing,  in  admirable  order,  as  if 
they  were  bent  on  making  this  a  model  farm ;  but  when  I 
was  looking  sharp  to  see  what  kind  of  seed  they  dropped 
into  the  furrow,  a  gang  of  fellows  by  my  side  suddenly 
began  to  hook  up  the  virgin  mould  itself,  with  a  pecu 
liar  jerk,  clean  down  to  the  sand,  or  rather  the  water, — 
for  it  was  a  very  springy  soil, — indeed  all  the  terra  firma 
there  was, — and  haul  it  away  on  sled?,  and  then  I  guessed 


SI  6  WALDEN. 

that  they  must  be  cutting  peat  in  a  bog.  So  they  came 
and  went  every  day,  with  a  peculiar  shriek  from  the  lo 
comotive,  from  and  to  some  point  of  the  polar  regions,  as 
it  seemed  to  me,  like  a  flock  of  arctic  snow-birds.  But 
sometimes  Squaw.  Walden  had  her  revenge,  and  a  hired 
man,  walking  behind  his  team,  slipped  through  a  crack 
in  the  ground  down  toward  Tartarus,  and  he  who 
was  so  brave  before  suddenly  became  but  the  ninth  part 
of  a  man,  almost  gave  up  his  animal  heat,  and  was  glad 
to  take  refuge  in  my  house,  and  acknowledged  that  there 
was  some  virtue  in  a  stove  ;  or  sometimes  the  frozen 
soil  took  a  piece  of  steel  out  of  a  ploughshare,  or  a 
plough  got  set  in  the  furrow  and  had  to  be  cut  out. 

To  speak  literally,  a  hundred  Irishmen,  with  Yankee 
overseers,  came  from  Cambridge  every  day  to  get  out 
the  ice.  They  divided  it  into  cakes  by  methods  too  well 
known  to  require  description,  and  these,  being  sledded  to 
the  shore,  were  rapidly  hauled  oif  on  to  an  ice  platform,  and 
raised  by  grappling  irons  and  block  and  tackle,  worked 
by  horses,  on  to  a  stack,  as  surely  as  so  many  barrels 
of  flour,  and  there  placed  evenly  side  by  side,  and  row 
upon  row,  as  if  they  formed  the  solid  base  of  an  obelisk 
designed  to  pierce  the  clouds.  They  told  me  that  in 
a  good  day  they  could  get  out  a  thousand  tons,  which 
was  the  yield  of  about  one  acre.  Deep  ruts  and  "  cradle 
holes  "  were  worn  in  the  ice,  as  on  terra  firma,  by  the 
passage  of  the  sleds  over  the  same  track,  and  the  horses 
invariably  ate  their  oats  out  of  cakes  of  ice  hollowed 
out  like  buckets.  They  stacked  up  the  cakes  thus  in 
the  open  air  in  a  pile  thirty-five  feet-  high  on  one  side 
and  six  or  seven  rods  square,  putting  hay  between  the 
outside  layers  to  exclude  the  air ;  for  when  the  wind, 
though  lever  so  cold,  finds  a  passage  through,  it  will 


THE    POND    IN    WINTER.  317 

wear  large  cavities,  leaving  slight  supports  or  studs  only 
here  and  there,  and  finally  topple  it  down.  At  first  it 
iooked  like  a  vast  blue  fort  or  Valhalla ;  but  when  they 
began  to  tuck  the  coarse  meadow  hay  into  the  crevices, 
and  this  became  covered  with  rime  and  icicles,  it  looked 
like  a  venerable  moss-grown  and  hoary  ruin,  built  of 
azure-tinted  marble,  the  abode  of  Winter,  that  old  man. 
we  see  in  the  almanac,  —  his  shanty,  as  if  he  had  a  de 
sign  to  estivate  with  us.  They  calculated  that  not 
twenty-five  per  cent,  of  this  would  reach  its  destination, 
and  that  two  or  three  per  cent,  would  be  wasted  in  the 
cars.  However,  a  still  greater  part  of  this  heap  had  a 
different  destiny  from  what  was  intended ;  for,  either  be 
cause  the  ice  was  found  not  to  keep  so  well  as  was  ex 
pected,  containing  more  air  than  usual,  or  for  some  other 
reason,  it  never  got  to  market.  This  heap,  made  in  the 
winter  of  '46-7  and  estimated  to  contain  ten  thousand 
tons,  was  finally  covered  with  hay  and  boards  ;  and 
though  it  was  unroofed  the  following  July,  and  a  part 
of  it  carried  off,  the  rest  remaining  exposed  to  the 
sun,  it  stood  over  that  summer  and  the  next  winter,  and 
was  not  quite  melted  till  September  1848.  Thus  the 
pond  recovered  the  greater  part. 

Like  the  water,  the  Walden  ice,  seen  near  at  hand, 
has  a  green  tint,  but  at  a  distance  is  beautifully  blue, 
and  you  can  easily  tell  it  from  the  white  ice  of  the  river 
or  the  merely  greenish  ice  of  some  ponds,  a  quarter  of  a 
mile  off.  Sometimes  one  of  those  great  cakes  slips  from 
the  ice-man's  sled  into  the  village  street,  and  lies  there  for 
a  week  like  a  great  emerald,  an  object  of  interest  to  all 
passers.  I  have  noticed  that  a  portion  of  Walden  which 
in  the  state  of  water  was  green  will  often,  when  frozen, 
appear  from  the  same  point  of  view  blue.  So  the  hoi- 


318  WALDEN. 

lows  about  this  pond  will,  sometimes,  in  the  winter 
be  filled  \\  ith  a  greenish  water  somewhat  like  its  own, 
but  the  next  day  will  have  frozen  blue.  Perhaps  the 
blue  color  of  water  and  ice  is  due  to  the  light  and  air 
they  contain,  and  the  most  transparent  is  the  bluest. 
Ice  is  an  interesting  subject  for  contemplation.  They 
told  me  that  they  had  some  in  the  ice-houses  at  Fresh 
Pond  five  years  old  which  was  as  good  as  ever.  Why 
is  it  that  a  bucket  of  water  soon  becomes  putrid,  but 
frozen  remains  sweet  forever?  It  is  commonly  said 
that  this  is  the  difference  between  the  affections  and  the 
intellect. 

Thus  for  sixteen  days  I  saw  from  my  window  a  hun 
dred  men  at  work  like  busy  husbandmen,  with  teams 
and  horses  and  apparently  all  the  implements  of  farm 
ing,  such  a  picture  as  we  see  on  the  first  page  of  the 
almanac ;  and  as  often  as  I  looked  out  I  was  reminded 
of  the  fable  of  the  lark  and  the  reapers,  or  the  parable 
of  the  sower,  and  the  like ;  and  now  they  are  all  gone, 
and  in  thirty  days  more,  probably,  I  shall  look  from  the 
same  window  on  the  pure  sea-green  Walden  water 
there,  reflecting  the  clouds  and  the  trees,  and  sending 
up  its  evaporations  in  solitude,  and  no  traces  will  appear 
that  a  man  has  ever  stood  there.  Perhaps  I  shall  hear  a 
solitary  loon  laugh  as  he  dives  and  plumes  himself,  or 
shall  see  a  lonely  fisher  in  his  boat,  like  a  floating  leaf, 
beholding  his  form  reflected  in  the  waves,  where  lately 
a  hundred  men  securely  labored. 

Thus  it  appears  that  the  sweltering  inhabitants  of 
Charleston  and  New  Orleans,  of  Madras  and  Bombay 
and  Calcutta,  drink  at  my  well.  In  the  morning  I  bathe, 
my  intellect  in  the  stupendous  and  cosmogonal  philoso 
phy  of  the  Bhagvat  Geeta,  since  whose  composition 


THE    POND    IN    WINTER.  319 

years  cf  the  gods  have  elapsed,  and  in  comparison  with 
which  our  modern  world  and  its  literature  seem  puny 
and  trivial ;  and  I  doubt  if  that  philosophy  is  not  to 
be  referred  to  a  previous  state  of  existence,  so  re 
mote  is  its  sublimity  from  our  conceptions.  I  lay  down 
the  book  and  go  to  my  well  for  water,  and  lo !  there  I 
meet  the  servam  of  the  Bramin,  priest  of  Brahma  and 
Vishnu  and  Indra,  who  still  sits  in  his  temple  on  the 
Ganges  reading  the  Vedas,  or  dwells  at  the  root  of  a 
tree  with  his  crust  and  water  jug.  I  meet  his  servant 
come  to  draw  water  for  his  master,  and  our  buckets 
as  it  were  grate  together  in  the  same  well.  The  pure 
"Walden  water  is  mingled  with  the  sacred  water  of  the 
Ganges.  With  favoring  winds  it  is  wafted  past  the  site 
of  the  fabulous  islands  of  Atlantis  and  the  Hesperides, 
makes  the  periplus  of  Hanno,  and,  floating  by  Ternate 
and  Tidore  and  the  mouth  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  melts 
in  the  tropic  gales  of  the  Indian  seas,  and  is  landed  in 
peats  of  which  Alexander  only  heard  the  names. 


SPRING. 


THE  opening  of  large  tracts  by  the  ice-cutters 
monly  causes  a  pond  to  break  up  earlier ;  for  the  water, 
agitated  by  the  wind,  even  in  cold  weather,  wears  away 
the  surrounding  ice.  But  such  was  not  the  effect  on 
Walden  that  year,  for  she  had  soon  got  a  thick  new  gar 
ment  to  take  the  place  of  the  old.  This  pond  never 
breaks  up  so  soon  as  the  others  in  this  neighborhood,  on 
account  both  of  its  greater  depth  and  its  having  no  stream 
passing  through  it  to  melt  or  wear  away  the  ice.  I  never 
knew  it  to  open  in  the  course  of  a  winter,  not  excepting 
that  of  '52—3,  which  gave  the  ponds  so  severe  a  trial. 
It  commonly  opens  about  the  first  of  April,  a  week  or 
ten  days  later  than  Flints'  Pond  and  Fair-Haven,  be 
ginning  to  melt  on  the  north  side  and  in  the  shallower 
parts  where  it  began  to  freeze.  It  indicates  better  than 
any  water  hereabouts  the  absolute  progress  of  the  sea 
son,  being  least  affected  by  transient  changes  of  temper 
ature.  A  severe  cold  of  a  few  days'  duration  in  March 
may  very  much  retard  the  opening  of  the  former  ponds, 
while  the  temperature  of  Walden  increases  almost  un 
interruptedly.  A  thermometer  thrust  into  the  middle 

(320) 


SPRING.  321 

of  Waklen  on  the  6th  of  March,  1847,  stood  at  32°,  or 
freezing  point ;  near  the  shore  at  33°  ;  in  the  middle  of 
Flints'  Pond,  the  same  day,  at  32£°  ;  at  a  dozen  rods 
from  the  shore,  in  shallow  water,  under  ice  a  foot  thick, 
at  36°.  This  difference  of  three  and  a  half  degrees  be 
tween  the  temperature  of  the  deep  water  and  the  shal 
low  in  the  latter  pond,  and  the  fact  that  a  great  propor 
tion  of  it  is  comparatively  shallow,  show  why  it  should 
break  up  so  much  sooner  than  Walden.  The  ice  in  the 
shallowest  part  was  at  this  time  several  inches  thinner 
than  in  the  middle.  In  mid-winter  the  middle  had  been 
the  warmest  and  the  ice  thinnest  there.  So,  also,  every 
one  who  has  waded  about  the  shores  of  a  pond  in  sum 
mer  must  have  perceived  how  much  warmer  the  water 
is  close  to  the  shore,  where  only  three  or  four  inches 
deep,  than  a  little  distance  out,  and  on  the  surface  where 
it  is  deep,  than  near  the  bottom.  In  spring  the  sun 
not  only  exerts  an  influence  through  the  increased  tem 
perature  of  the  air  and  earth,  but  its  heat  passes  through 
ice  a  foot  or  more  thick,  and  is  reflected  from  the  bottom 
in  shallow  water,  and  so  also  warms  the  water  and  melts 
the  under  side  of  the  ice,  at  the  same  time  that  it  is 
melting  it  more  directly  above,  making  it  uneven,  and 
causing  the  air  bubbles  which  it  contains  to  extend 
themselves  upward  and  downward  until  it  is  complete 
ly  honey-combed,  and  at  last  disappears  suddenly  in  a 
single  spring  rain.  Ice  has  its  grain  as  well  as  wood, 
and  when  a  cake  begins  to  rot  or  "  comb,"  that  is,  assume 
the  appearance  of  honey-comb,  whatever  may  be  its 
position,  the  air  cells  are  at  right  angles  with  what  was 
the  water  surface.  Where  there  is  a  rock  or  a  log  rising 
near  to  the  surface  the  ice  over  it  is  much  thinner,  and 
is  frequently  quite  dissolved  by  this  reflected  heat ;  and 
21 


322  WALDEN. 

I  have  been  told  that  in  the  experiment  at  Cambridge 
to  freeze  water  in  a  shallow  wooden  pond,  though  Ilia 
cold  air  circulated  underneath,  and  so  had  access  to  both 
Bides,  the  reflection  of  the  sun  from  the  bottom  more 
than  counterbalanced  this  advantage.  When  a  warm 
rain  in  the  middle  of  the  winter  melts  off  the  snow-ice 
from  Walden,  and  leaves  a  hard  dark  or  transparent 
ice  on  the  middle,  there  will  be  a  strip  of  rotten  though 
thicker  white  ice,  a  rod  or  more  wide,  about  the  shores, 
created  by  this  reflected  heat.  Also,  as  I  have  said,  the 
bubbles  themselves  within  the  ice  operate  as  burning 
glasses  to  melt  the  ice  beneath. 

The  phenomena  of  the  year  take  place  every  day  in 
a  pond  on  a  small  scale.  Every  morning,  generally 
speaking,  the  shallow  water  is  being  warmed  more  rap 
idly  than  the  deep,  though  it  may  not  be  made  so  warm 
after  all,  and  every  evening  it  is  being  cooled  more  rap 
idly  until  the  morning.  The  day  is  an  epitome  of  the 
year.  The  night  is  the  winter,  the  morning  and  even 
ing  are  the  spring  and  fall,  and  the  noon  is  the  summer. 
The  cracking  and  booming  of  the  ice  indicate  a  change 
of  temperature.  One  pleasant  morning  after  a  cold 
night,  February  24th,  1850,  having  gone  to  Flints' 
Pond  to  spend  the  day,  I  noticed  with  surprise,  that 
when  I  struck  the  ice  with  the  head  of  my  axe,  it  re 
sounded  like  a  gong  for  many  rods  around,  or  as  if  I 
had  struck  on  a  tight  drum-head.  The  pond  began  to 
boom  about  an  hour  after  sunrise,  when  it  felt  the  influ 
ence  of  the  sun's  rays  slanted  upon  it  from  over  the 
hills ;  it  stretched  itself  and  yawned  like  a  waking  man 
with  a  gradually  increasing  tumult,  which  was  kept  up 
three  or  four  hours.  It  took  a  short  siesta  at  noon,  and 
boomed  once  more  toward  night,  as  the  sun  was  with- 


SPRING.  323 

drawing  his  influence.  In  .the  right  stage  of  the  weath 
er  a  pond  fires  its  evening  gun  with  great  regularity. 
Bu  •  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  being  full  of  cracks,  and 
the  air  also  being  less  elastic,  it  had  completely  lost  its 
resonance,  and  probably  fishes  and  muskrats  could  not 
then  have  been  stunned  by  a  blow  on  it.  The  fisher 
men  saj  that  the  "  thundering  of  the  pond  "  scares  the 
fishes  and  prevents  their  biting.  The  pond  does  not 
thunder  every  evening,  and  I  cannot  tell  surely  when  to 
expect  its  thundering ;  but  though  I  may  perceive  no 
difference  in  the  weather,  it  does.  Who  would  have 
suspected  so  large  and  cold  and  thick-skinned  a  thing  to 
be  so  sensitive  ?  Yet  it  has  its  law  to  which  it  thunders 
obedience  when  it  should  as  surely  as  the  buds  expand 
in  the  spring.  The  earth  is  all  alive  and  covered  with 
papillae.  The  largest  pond  is  as  sensitive  to  atmos 
pheric  changes  as  the  globule  of  mercury  in  its  tube 


One  attraction  in  coming  to  the  woods  to  live  was  that 
I  should  have  leisure  and  opportunity  to  see  the  spring 
come  in.  The  ice  in  the  pond  at  length  begins  to  be 
honey-combed,  and  I  can  set  my  heel  in  it  as  I  walk. 
Fogs  and  rains  and  warmer  suns  are  gradually  melting 
the  snow ;  the  days  have  grown  sensibly  longer ;  and  I 
Bee  how  I  shall  get  through  the  winter  without  adding 
to  my  wood-pile,  for  large  fires  are  no  longer  necessary. 
I  am  on  the  alert  for  the  first  signs  of  spring,  to  hear 
the  chance  note  of  some  arriving  bird,  or  the  striped 
squirrel's  chirp,  for  his  stores  must  be  now  nearly  ex 
hausted,  or  see  the  woodchuck  venture  out  of  his  win 
ter  quarters.  On  the  13th  of  March,  after  I  had  heard 
the  bluebird,  song -sparrow,  and  red-wing,  the  ice  was 


324  WALDEN. 

still  nearly  a  foot  thick.  As  the  weather  grew  warmer 
it  was  not  sensibly  worn  away  by  the  water,  nor  broken 
up  and  floated  off  as  in  rivers,  but,  though  it  was  com 
pletely'  melted  for  half  a  rod  in  width  about  the  shore, 
the  middle  was  merely  honey-combed  and  saturated 
with  water,  so  that  you  could  put  your  foot  through  it 
when  six  inches  thick ;  but  by  the  next  day  evening, 
perhaps,  after  a  warm  rain  followed  by  fog,  it  would 
have  wholly  disappeared,  all  gone  off  with  the  fog,  spir 
ited  away.  One  year  I  went  across  the  middle  only 
five  days  before  it  disappeared  entirely.  In  1845  Wai- 
den  was  first  completely  open  on  the  1st  of  April;  in 
'46,  the  25th  of  March ;  in  '47,  the  8th  of  April ;  in  '51, 
the  28th  of  March  ;  in  '52,  the  18th  of  April ;  in  '53,  the 
23d  of  March ;  in  '54,  about  the  7th  of  April. 

Every  incident  connected  with  the  breaking  up  of  the 
rivers  and  ponds  and  the  settling  of  the  weather  is  par 
ticularly  interesting  to  us  who  live  in  a  climate  of  so 
great  extremes.  When  the  warmer  days  come,  they 
who  dwell  near  the  river  hear  the  ice  crack  at  night 
with  a  startling  whoop  as  loud  as  artillery,  as  if  its  icy 
fetters  were  rent  from  end  to  end,  and  within  a  few  days 
see  it  rapidly  going  out.  So  the  alligator  comes  out  of 
the  mud  with  quakings  of  the  earth.  One  old  man,  who 
has  been  a  close  observer  of  Nature,  and  seems  as  thor 
oughly  wise  in  regard  to  all  her  operations  as  if  she  had 
been  put  upon  the  stocks  when  he  was  a  boy,  and  he 
had  helped  to  lay  her  keel,  —  who  has  come  to  his 
growth,  and  can  hardly  acquire  more  of  natural  lore  if 
he  should  live  to  the  age  of  Methuselah, — told  me,  and 
I  was  surprised  to  hear  him  express  wonder  at  any  of 
Nature's  operations,  for  I  thought  that  there  were  no  se« 
crets  between  them,  that  one  spring  day  he  took  his  gun 


SPRING.  325 

and  boat,  and  thought  that  he  would  have  a  little  sport 
with  the  ducks.  There  was  ice  still  on  the  meadows, 
but  it  was  all  gone  out  of  the  river,  and  he  dropped 
down  without  obstruction  from  Sudbury,  where  he  lived, 
to  Fair-Haven  Pond,  which  he  found,  unexpectedly, 
tnvered  for  the  most  part  with  a  firm  field  of  ice.  It 
tvas  a  warm  day,  and  he  was  surprised  to  see  so  great  a 
body  of  ice  remaining.  Not  seeing  any  ducks,  he  hid 
his  boat  on  the  north  or  back  side  of  an  island  in  the 
pond,  and  then  concealed  himself  in  the  bushes  on  the 
south  side,  to  await  them.  The  ice  was  melted  for  three. 
or  four  rods  from  the  shore,  and  there  was  a  smooth  and 
warm  sheet  of  water,  with  a  muddy  bottom,  such  as  the 
ducks  love,  within,  and  he  thought  it  likely  that  some 
would  be  along  pretty  soon.  After  he  had  lain  still 
there  about  an  hour  he  heard  a  low  and  seemingly  very 
distant  sound,  but  singularly  grand  and  impressive,  un 
like  any  thing  he  had  ever  heard,  gradually  swelling  and 
increasing  as  if  it  would  have  a  universal  and  memora 
ble  ending,  a  sullen  rush  and  roar,  which  seemed  to  him 
all  at  once  like  the  sound  of  a  vast  body  of  fowl  coming 
in  to  settle  there,  and,  seizing  his  gun,  he  started  up  in 
haste  and  excited ;  but  he  found,  to  his  surprise,  that  the 
whole  body  of  the  ice  had  started  while  he  lay  there, 
and  drifted  in  to  the  shore,  and  the  sound  he  had  heard 
was  made  by  its  edge  grating  on  the  shore,  —  at  first 
gently  nibbled  and  crumbled  off,  but  at  length  heaving 
up  and  scattering  its  wrecks  along  the  island  to  a  con 
siderable  height  before  it  came  to  a  stand  still. 

At  length  the  sun's  rays  have  attained  the  right  an 
gle,  and  warm  winds  blow  up  mist  and  rain  and  melt 
the  snow  banks,  and  the  sun  dispersing  the  mist  smiles 
m  a  checkered  landscape  of  rusft't  a.nd  white  smoking 


326  WALDEtf. 

with  incense,  through  which  the  traveller  picks  his  way 
from  islet  to  islet,  cheered  by  the  music  of  a  thousand 
tinkling  rills  and  rivulets  whose  veins  are  filled  with  the 
blood  of  winter  which  they  are  bearing  off. 

Few  phenomena  gave  me  more  delight  than  to  ob 
serve  the  forms  which  thawing  sand  and  clay  assume  in 
flowing  down  the  sides  of  a  deep  cut  on  the  railroad 
through  which  I  passed  on  my  way  to  the  village,  a 
phenomenon  not  very  common  on  so  large  a  scale, 
though  the  number  of  freshly  exposed  banks  of  the  right 
material  must  have  been  greatly  multiplied  since  rail 
roads  were  invented.  The  material  was  sand  of  every 
degree  of  fineness  and  of  various  rich  colors,  commonly 
mixed  with  a  little  clay.  When  the  frost  comes  out  in 
the  spring,  and  even  in  a  thawing  day  in  the  winter,  the 
sand  begins  to  flow  down  the  slopes  like  lava,  sometimes 
bursting  out  through  the  snow  and  overflowing  it  where 
no  sand  was  to  be  seen  before.  Innumerable  little 
streams  overlap -and  interlace  one  with  another,  exhibit 
ing  a  sort  of  hybrid  product,  which  obeys  half  way  the 
law  of  currents,  and  half  way  that  of  vegetation.  As  it 
flows  it  takes  the  forms  of  sappy  leaves  or  vines,  mak 
ing  heaps  of  pulpy  sprays  a  foot  or  more  in  depth,  and 
resembling,  as  you  look  down  on  them,  the  laciniated 
lobed  and  imbricated  thalluses  of  some  lichens ;  or  you 
are  reminded  of  coral,  of  leopards'  paws  or  birds'  feet, 
of  brains  or  lungs  or  bowels,  and  excrements  of  all  kinds. 
It  is  a  truly  grotesque  vegetation,  whose  forms  and  color 
we  see  imitated  in  bronze,  a  sort  of  architectural  foliage 
more  ancient  and  typical  than  acanthus,  chiccory,  ivy, 
vine,  or  any  vegetable  leaves ;  destined  perhaps,  under 
some  circumstances,  to  become  a  puzzle  to  future  geolo 
gists.  The  whole  cut  impressed  me  as  if  it  were  a  cave 


SPRING.  327 

with  its  stalactites  laid  open  to  the  light.  The  various 
shades  of  the  sand  are  singularly  rich  and  agreeable, 
embracing  the  different  iron  colors,  brown,  gray,  yellow 
ish,  and  reddish.  When  the  flowing  mass  reaches  the 
drain  at. the  foot  of  the  bank  it  spreads  out  flatter  into 
strands,  the  separate  streams  losing  their  semi-cylindri 
cal  form  and  gradually  becoming  more  flat  and  broad, 
running  together  as  they  are  more  moist,  till  they  form 
an  almost  flat  sand,  still  variously  and  beautifully  shaded, 
but  in  which  you  can  trace  the  original  forms  of  vegeta 
tion  ;  till  at  length,  in  the  water  itself,  they  are  convert 
ed  into  banks,  like  those  formed  off  the  mouths  of  rivers, 
and  the  forms  of  vegetation  are  lost  in  the  ripple  marks 
on  the  bottom. 

The  whole  bank,  which  is  from  twenty  to  forty  feet 
high,  is  sometimes  overlaid  with  a  mass  of  this  kind  of 
foliage,  or  sandy  rupture,  for  a  quarter  of  a  mile  on  one 
or  both  sides,  the  produce  of  one  spring  day.  What 
makes  this  sand  foliage  remarkable  is  its  springing  into 
existence  thus  suddenly.  When  I  see  on  the  one  side 
the  inert  bank,  —  for  the  sun  acts  on  one  side  first, — 
and  on  the  other  this  luxuriant  foliage,  the  creation  of 
an  hour,  I  am  affected  as  if  in  a  peculiar  sense  I  stood 
in  the  laboratory  of  the  Artist  who  made  the  world  and 
me, — had  come  to  where  he  was  still  at  work,  sporting 
on  this  bank,  and  with  excess  of  energy  strewing  his 
fresh  designs  about.  I  feel  as  if  I  were  nearer  to  the 
vitals  of  the  globe,  for  this  sandy  overflow  is  something 
such  a  foliaceous  mass  as  the  vitals  of  the  animal  body. 
You  find  thus  in  the  very  sands  an  anticipation  of  the 
vegetable  leaf.  No  wonder  that  the  earth  expresses 
itself  outwardly  in  leaves,  it  so  labors  with  the  idea  in 
wardly.  The  atoms  have  already  learned  this  law,  and 


528  WALDEN. 

are  pregnant  by  it.  The  overhanging  leaf  sees  here 
its  prototype.  Internally,  whether  in  the  globe  or  ani 
mal  body,  it  is  a  moist  thick  lobe,  a  word  especially  ap 
plicable  to  the  liver  and  lungs  and  the  leaves  of  fat, 
(Ae.'^w,  labor,  lapsus,  to  flow  or  slip  downward,  a  laps 
ing  ;  Aoj3oc,  globus,  lobe,  globe ;  also  lap,  flap,  and 
many  other  words,)  externally  a  dry  thin  leaf,  even  aa 
the /and  v  are  a  pressed  and  dried  b.  The  radicals  of 
lobe  are  Ib,  the  soft  mass  of  the  b  (single  lobed,  or  B, 
double  lobed,)  with  a  liquid  I  behind  it  pressing  it  for 
ward.  In  globe,  gib,  the  guttural  g  adds  to  the  mean 
ing  the  capacity  of  the  throat.  The  feathers  and  wings 
of  birds  are  still  drier  and  thinner  leaves.  Thus,  also, 
you  pass  from  the  lumpish  grub  in  the  earth  to  the  airy 
and  fluttering  butterfly.  The  very  globe  continually 
transcends  and  translates  itself,  and  becomes  winged  in 
its  orbit.  Even  ice  begins  with  delicate  crystal  leaves, 
as  if  it  had  flowed  into  moulds  which  the  fronds  of  water 
plants  have  impressed  on  the  watery  mirror.  The 
whole  tree  itself  is  but  one  leaf,  and  rivers  are  still 
vaster  leaves  whose  pulp  is  intervening  earth,  and  towns 
and  cities  are  the  ova  of  insects  in  their  axils. 

When  the  sun  withdraws  the  sand  ceases  to  flow,  but 
in  the  morning  the  streams  will  start  once  more  and 
branch  and  branch  again  into  a  myriad  of  others.  You 
here  see  perchance  how  blood  vessels  are  formed.  If 
you  look  closely  you  observe  that  first  there  pushes  for 
ward  from  the  thawing  mass  a  stream  of  softened  sand 
with  a  drop-like  point,  like  the  ball  of  the  finger,  feeling 
its  way  slowly  and  blindly  downward,  until  at  last  with 
more  heat  and  moisture,  as  the  sun  gets  higher,  the  most 
fluid  portion,  in  its  effort  to  obey  the  law  to  which  the 
most  inert  also  yields,  separates  from  the  latter  and 


SPRING.  2 

forms  for  itseli  a  meandering  channel  or  artery  within 
that,  in  which  is  seen  a  little  silvery  stream  glanc 
ing  like  lightning  from  one  stage  of  pulpy  leaves  or 
branches  to  another,  and  ever  and  anon  swallowed  up 
in  the  sand.  It  is  wonderful  how  rapidly  yet  perfectly 
the  sand  organizes  itself  as  it  flows,  using  the  best  ma 
terial  its  mass  affords  to  form  the  sharp  edges  of  its  chan 
nel.  Such  are  the  sources  of  rivers.  In  the  silieious 
matter  which  the  water  deposits  is  perhaps  the  bony 
system,  and  in  the  still  finer  soil  and  organic  matter  the 
fleshy  fibre  or  cellular  tissue.  What  is  man  but  a  mass 
of  thawing  clay  ?  The  ball  of  the  human  finger  is  but 
a  drop  congealed.  The  fingers  and  toes  flow  to  their 
extent  from  the  thawing  mass  of  the  body.  Who  knows 
what  the  human  body  would  expand  and  flow  out  to 
under  a  more  genial  heaven  ?  Is  not  the  hand  a  spread 
ing  palm  leaf  with  its  lobes  and  veins  ?  The  ear  may 
be  regarded,  fancifully,  as  a  lichen,  umbilicaria,  on  the 
side  of  the  head,  with  its  lobe  or  drop.  The  lip  —  labi- 
um,  from  labor  (?)  — laps  or  lapses  from  the  sides  of  the 
cavernous  mouth.  The  nose  is  a  manifest  congealed 
drop  or  stalactite.  The  chin  is  a  still  larger  drop,  the 
confluent  dripping  of  the  face.  The  cheeks  are  a  slide 
from  the  brows  into  the  valley  of  the  face,  opposed  and 
diffused  by  the  cheek  bones.  Each  rounded  lobe  of  the 
vegetable  leaf,  too,  is  a  thick 'and  now  loitering  drop,  larg 
er  or  smaller ;  the  lobes  are  the  fingers  of  the  leaf;  and 
as  many  lobes  as  it  has,  in  so  many  directions  it  tends  to 
flow,  and  more  heat  or  other  genial  influences  would 
have  caused  it  to  flow  yet  farther. 

Thus  it  seemed  that  this  one  hillside  illustrated  Ihe 
principle  of  all  the  operations  of  Nature.  The  Maker 
of  this  earth  but  patented  a  leaf.  What  Champollion 


330  WALDEN. 

will  decipher  this  hieroglyphic  for  us,  that  we  may 
turn  over  a  new  leaf  at  last?  This  phenomenon  is 
more  exhilarating  to  me  than  the  luxuriance  and  fertility 
of  vineyards.  True,  it  is  somewhat  excrementitious  in 
its  character,  and  there  is  no  end  to  the  heaps  of  liver 
lights  and  bowels,  as  if  the  globe  were  turned  wrong 
side  outward  ;  but  this  suggests  at  least  that  Nature  has 
some  bowels,  and  there  again  is  mother  of  humanity. 
This  is  the  frost  coming  out  of  the  ground  ;  this  is  Spring. 
It  precedes  the  green  and  flowery  spring,  as  mythology 
precedes  regular  poetry.  I  know  of  nothing  more  pur 
gative  of  winter  fumes  and  indigestions.  It  convinces 
me  that  Earth  is  still  in  her  swaddling  clothes,  and 
stretches  forth  baby  fingers  on  every  side.  Fresh  curia 
spring  from  the  baldest  brow.  There  is  nothing  inor 
ganic.  These  foliaceous  heaps  lie  along  the  bank  like 
the  slag  of  a  furnace,  showing  that  Nature  is  "  in  full 
blast "  within.  The  earth  is  not  a  mere  fragment  of 
dead  history,  stratum  upon  stratum  like  the  leaves  of  a 
book,  to  be  studied  by  geologists  and  antiquaries 
chiefly,  but  living  poetry  like  the  leaves  of  a  tree,  which 
precede  flowers  and  fruit,  —  not  a  fossil  earth,  but  a 
living  earth ;  compared  with  whose  great  central  life  all 
animal  and  vegetable  life  is  merely  parasitic.  Its  throes 
will  heave  our  exuviae  from  their  graves.  You  may 
melt  your  metals  and  cast  them  into  the  most  beautiful 
moulds  you  can  ;  they  will  never  excite  me  like  the 
forms  which  this  molten  earth  flows  out  into.  And  not 
only  it,  but  the  institutions  upon  it,  are  plastic  like  clay 
In  the  hands  of  the  potter. 


Kre  long,  not  only  on  these  banks,  but  on  every  liilJ 


SPRING.  331 

and  plain  and  in  every  hollow,  the  frost  comes  out  of 
the  ground  like  a  dormant  quadruped  from  its  burrow, 
and  seeks  the  sea  with  music,  or  migrates  to  other  climes 
in  clouds.  Thaw  with  his  gentle  persuasion  is  more 
powerful  than  Thor  with  his  hammer.  The  one  melts, 
the  other  but  breaks  in  pieces. 

When  the  ground  was  partially  bare  of  snow,  and  a 
few  warm  days  had  dried  its  surface  somewhat,  it  was 
pleasant  to  compare  the  first  tender  signs  of  the  infant 
year  just  peeping  forth  with  the  stately  beauty  of  the 
withered  vegetation  which  had  withstood  the  winter,  — 
life-everlasting,  golden-rods,  pinweeds,  and  graceful 
wild  grasses,  more  obvious  and  interesting  frequently 
than  in  summer  even,  as  if  their  beauty  was  not  ripe 
till  then  ;  "even  cotton-grass,  cat-tails,  mulleins,  Johns- 
wort,  hard-hack,  meadow-sweet,  and  other  strong 
stemmed  plants,  those  unexhausted  granaries  which  en 
tertain  the  earliest  birds,  —  decent  weeds,  at  least,  which 
widowed  Nature  wears.  I  am  particularly  attracted  by 
the  arching  and  sheaf-like  top  of  the  wool-grass ;  it 
brings  back  the  summer  to  our  winter  memories,  and  is 
among  the  forms  which  art  loves  to  copy,  and  which,  in 
the  vegetable  kingdom,  have  the  same  relation  to  types 
already  in  the  mind  of  man  that  astronomy  has.  It  is 
an  antique  style  older  than  Greek  or  Egyptian.  Many 
of  the  phenomena  of  Winter  are  suggestive  of  an  inex 
pressible  tenderness  and  fragile  delicacy.  We  are  ac 
customed  to  hear  this  king  described  as  a  rude  and  bois 
terous  tyrant ;  but  with  the  gentleness  of  a  lover  he 
adorns  the  tresses  of  Summer. 

At  the  approach  of  spring  the  red-squirrels  got  under 
vay  house,  two  at  a  time,  directly  under  my  feet  as  I  sat 
reading  or  writing,  and  kept  up  the  queerest  chuck'.ing 


332  WALDEN. 

and  chirruping  and  vocal  pirouetting  and  gurgling 
sounds  that  ever  were  heard ;  and  when  I  stamped  they 
only  chirruped  the  louder,  as  if  past  all  fear  and  respect 
in  their  mad  pranks,  defying  humanity  to  stop  them. 
No  you  don't — chickaree  —  chickaree.  They  were  whol 
ly  deaf  to  my  arguments,  or  failed  to  perceive  their  force, 
and  fell  into  a  strain  of  invective  that  was  irresistible. 

The  first  sparrow  of  spring !  The  year  beginning 
with  younger  hope  than  ever !  The  faint  silvery  war- 
blings  heard  over  the  partially  bare  and  moist  fields  from 
the  blue-bird,  the  song-sparrow,  and  the  red-wing,  as  if 
the  last  flakes  of  winter  tinkled  as  they  fell !  What  at 
such  a  time  are  histories,  chronologies,  traditions,  and  all 
written  revelations  ?  The  brooks  sing  carols  and  glees 
to  the  spring.  The  marsh-hawk  sailing  low  over  the 
meadow  is  already  seeking  the  first  slimy  life  that 
awakes.  The  sinking  sound  of  melting  snow  is  heard 
in  all  dells,  and  the  ice  dissolves  apace  in  the  ponds. 
The  grass  flames  up  on  the  hillsides  like  a  spring  fire,  — 
"  et  primitus  oritur  herba  imbribus  primoribus  evocata," 
—as  if  the  earth  sent  forth  an  inward  heat  to  greet  the 
returning  sun ;  not  yellow  but  green  is  the  color  of  its 
flame ;  —  the  symbol  of  perpetual  youth,  the  grass-blade, 
like  a  long  green  ribbon,  streams  from  the  sod  into  the 
summer,  checked  indeed  by  the  frost,  but  anon  pushing 
on  again,  lifting  its  spear  of  last  year's  hay  with  the 
fresh  life  below.  It  grows  as  steadily  as  the  rill  oozes 
out  of  the  ground.  It  is  almost  identical  with  that,  for 
in  the.  growing  days  of  June,  when  the  rills  are  dry,  the 
grass  blades  are  their  channels,  and  from  year  to  year 
the  herds  drink  at  this  perennial  green  stream,  and  the 
mower  draws  from  it  betimes  their  winter  supply.  So 
our  human  life  but  dies  down  to  its  root,  and  still  put* 
forth  its  green  blade  to  eternity. 


SPRING.  333 

Walden  is  melting  apace.  There  is  a  canal  two  rods 
wide  along  the  northerly  and  westerly  sides,  and  widoc 
still  at  the  east  end.  A  great  field  of  ice  has  cracked 
off  from  the  main  body.  I  hear  a  song-sparrow  singing 
from  the  bushes  on  the  shore,  —  olit,  olit,  olit,  —  chip, 
chip,  chip,  che  char,  —  che  wiss,  wiss,  wiss.  He  too  is 
helping  to  crack  it.  How  handsome  the  great  sweeping 
curves  in  the  edge  of  the  ice,  answering  somewhat  to 
those  of  the  shore,  but  more  regular !  It  is  unusually 
hard,  owing  to  the  recent  severe  but  transient  cold,  and 
all  watered  or  waved  like  a  palace  floor.  But  the  wind 
slides  eastward  over  its  opaque  surface  in  vain,  till  it 
reaches  the  living  surface  beyond.  It  is  glorious  to  be 
hold  this  ribbon  of  water  sparkling  in  the  sun,  the  bare 
face  of  the  pond  full  of  glee  and  youth,  as  if  it  spoke  the 
joy  of  the  fishes  within  it,  and  of  the  sands  on  its  shore, 
—  a  silvery  sheen  as  from  the  scales  of  a  leuciscus,  as  it 
were  all  one  active  fish.  Such  is  the  contrast  between 
winter  and  spring.  Walden  was  dead  and  is  alive  again. 
But  this  spring  it  broke  up  more  steadily,  as  I  have 
said. 

The  change  from  storm  and  winter  to  serene  and  mild 
weather,  from  dark  and  sluggish  hours  to  bright  and 
elastic  ones,  is  a  memorable  crisis  which  all  things  pro 
claim.  It  is  seemingly  instantaneous  at  last.  Suddenly 
an  influx  of  light  filled  my  house,  though  the  evening- 
was  at  hand,  and  the  clouds  of  winter  still  overhung  it, 
and  the  eaves  were  dripping  with  sleety  rain.  I  looked 
out  the  window,  and  lo !  where  yesterday  was  cold  gray 
ice  there  lay  the  transparent  pond  already  calm  and  full  of 
hope  as  in  a  summer  evening,  reflecting  a  summer  even 
ing  sky  in  its  bosom,  though  none  was  visible  overhead, 
as  if  it  had  intelligence  with  some  remote  horizon,  I 


334  WALDEN. 

heard  a  robin  in  the  distance,  the  first  I  had  heard  for 
many  a  thousand  years,  raethought,  whose  note  I  shall 
not  forget  for  many  a  thousand  more,  —  the  same  sweet 
and  powerful  song  as  of  yore.  O  the  evening  robin,  at 
the  end  of  a  New  England  summer  day !  If  I  could 
ever  find  the  twig  he  sits  upon!  I  mean  Tie;  I  mean 
the  twig.  This  at  least  is  not  the  Turdus  migratorius. 
The  pitch-pines  and  shrub-oaks  about  my  house,  which 
had  so  long  drooped,  suddenly  resumed  their  several 
characters,  looked  brighter,  greener,  and  more  erect  and 
alive,  as  if  effectually  cleansed  and  restored  by  the  rain. 
I  knew  that  it  would  not  rain  any  more.  You  may  tell 
by  looking  at  any  twig  of  the  forest,  ay,  at  your  very 
wood-pile,  whether  its  winter  is  past  or  not.  As  it  grew 
darker,  I  was  startled  by  the  honking  of  geese  flying 
low  over  the  woods,  like  weary  travellers  getting  in  late 
from  southern  lakes,  and  indulging  at  last  in  unre 
strained  complaint  and  mutual  consolation.  Standing 
at  my  door,  I  could  hear  the  rush  of  their  wings  ;  when, 
driving  toward  my  house,  they  suddenly  spied  my  light, 
and  with  hushed  clamor  wheeled  and  settled  in  the  pond. 
So  I  came  in,  and  shut  the  door,  and  passed  my  first 
spring  night  in  the  woods. 

In  the  morning  I  watched  the  geese  from  the  door 
through  the  mist,  sailing  in  the  middle  of  the  pond,  fifty 
rods  off,  so  large  and  tumultuous  that  Walden  appeared 
like  an  artificial  pond  for  their  amusement.  But  when 
I  stood  on  the  shore  they  at  once  rose  up  with  a  great 
flapping  of  wings  at  the  signal  of  their  commander,  and 
when  they  had  got  into  rank  circled  about  over  my 
head,  twenty-nine  of  them,  and  then  steered  straight  to 
Canada,  with  a  regular  honk  from  the  leader  at  inter 
vals,  trusting  to  break  their  fast  in  muddier  pools.  A 


SPRING.  335 

•* plump"  of  ducks  rose  at  the  same  time  and  took 
the  route  to  the  north  in  the  wake  of  their  noisier 
cousins. 

For  a  week  I  heard  the  circling  groping  clangor  of 
some  solitary  goose  in  the  foggy  mornings,  seeking  its 
companion,  and  still  peopling  the  woods  with  the  sound 
of  a  larger  life  than  they  could  sustain.  In  April  the 
pigeons  were  seen  again  flying  express  in  small  flocks, 
and  in  due  time  I  heard  the  martins  twittering  over  my 
clearing,  though  it  had  not  seemed  that  the  township 
contained  so  many  that  it  could  afford  me  any,  and  I 
fancied  that  they  were  peculiarly  of  the  ancient  race 
that  dwelt  in  hollow  trees  ere  white  men  came.  In  al 
most  all  climes  the  tortoise  and  the  frog  are  among  the 
precursors  and  heralds  of  this  season,  and  birds  fly  with 
song  and  glancing  plumage,  and  plants  spring  and  bloom, 
and  winds  blow;  to  correct  this  slight  oscillation  of  the 
poles  and  preserve  the  equilibrium  of  Nature. 

As  every  season  seems  best  to  us  in  its  turn,  so  the 
coming  in  of  spring  is  like  the  creation  of  Cosmos  out  of 
Chaos  and  the  realization  of  the  Golden  Age.  — 

"  Eurus  ad  Auroram,  Nabathacaque  regna  recessit, 
Persidaque,  et  radiis  juga  subdita  matutinis." 

"  The  East- Wind  withdrew  to  Aurora  and  the  Nabathsean  kingdom. 
And  the  Persian,  and  the  ridges  placed  under  the  morning  rays. 

*  *  *  * 

Man  was  born.     Whether  that  Artificer  of  things, 
The  origin  of  a  better  world,  made  him  from  the  divine  seed; 
Or  the  earth  being  recent  and  lately  sundered  from  tbe  high 
Ether,  retained  some  seeds  of  cognate  heaven." 

A  single  gentle  rain  makes  the  grass  many  shades 
greener.  So  our  prospects  brighten  on  the  influx  of 


336  WALDEN. 

better  thoughts.  We  should  be  blessed  if  we  lived  in 
the  present  always,  and  took  advantage  of  every  acci 
dent  that  befell  us,  like  the  grass  which  confesses  the  in 
fluence  of  the  slightest  dew  that  falls  on  it ;  and  did  not 
spend  our  time  in  atoning  for  the  neglect  of  past  oppor 
tunities,  which  we  call  doing  our  duty.  "We  loiter  in 
winter  while  it  is  already  spring.  In  a  pleasant  spring 
morning  all  men's  sins  are  forgiven.  Such  a  day  is  a 
truce  to  vice.  While  such  a  sun  holds  out  to  burn,  the 
vilest  sinner  may  return.  Through  our  own  recovered 
innocence  we  discern  the  innocence  of  our  neighbors. 
You  may  have  known  your  neighbor  yesterday  for  a 
thief,  a  drunkard,  or  a  sensualist,  and  merely  pitied  or 
despised  him,  and  despaired  of  the  world ;  but  the  sun 
shines  bright  and  warm  this  first  spring  morning,  re 
creating  the  world,  and  you  meet  him  at  some  serene 
work,  and  see  how  his  exhausted  and  debauched  veins 
expand  with  still  joy  and  bless  the  new  day,  feel  the 
spring  influence  with  the  innocence  of  infancy,  and  all 
his  faults  are  forgotten.  There  is  not  only  an  atmos 
phere  of  good  will  about  him,  but  even  a  savor  of  holi 
ness  groping  for  expression,  blindly  and  ineffectually 
perhaps,  like  a  new-born  instinct,  and  for  a  short  hour 
the  south  hill-side  echoes  to  no  vulgar  jest.  You  see 
some  innocent  fair  shoots  preparing  to  burst  from  his 
gnarled  rind  and  try  another  year's  life,  tender  and 
fresh  as  the  youngest  plant.  Even  he  has  entered  into 
the  joy  of  his  Lord.  Why  the  jailer  does  not  leave 
open  his  prison  doors,  —  why  the  judge  does  not  dis 
miss  his  case,  —  why  the  preacher  does  not  dismiss  his 
congregation !  It  is  because  they  do  not  obey  the  hint 
which  God  gives  them,  nor  accept  the  pardon  which  he 
freely  offers  to  all. 


SPRING.  337 

"A  return  to  goodness  produced  each  day  in  the 
tranquil  and  beneficent  breath  of  the  morning,  causes 
that  in  respect  to  the  love  of  virtue  and  the  hatred  of 
vice,  on.*  approaches  a  little  the  primitive  nature  of 
man,  as  the  sprouts  of  the  forest  which  has  been  felled. 
In  like  manner  the  evil  which  one  does  in  the  interval 
of  a  day  prevents  the  germs  of  virtues  which  began  to 
spring  up  again  from  developing  themselves  and  de 
stroys  them. 

"  After  the  germs  of  virtue  have  thus  been  prevented 
many  times  from  developing  themselves,  then  the  be 
neficent  breath  of  evening  does  not  suffice  to  preserve 
them.  As  soon  as  the  breath  of  evening  does  not  suf 
fice  longer  to  preserve  them,  then  the  nature  of  man 
does  not  differ  much  from  that  of  the  brute.  Men 
seeing  the  nature  of  this  man  like  that  of  the  brute, 
think  that  he  has  never  possessed  the  innate  faculty  of 
reason.  Are  those  the  true  and  natural  sentiments 
of  man  ?  " 

"  The  Golden  Age  was  first  created,  which  without  any  avenger 
Spontaneously  without  law  cherished  fidelity  and  rectitude. 
Punishment  and  fear  were  not ;  nor  were  threatening  words  read 
On  suspended  brass  ;  nor  did  the  suppliant  crowd  fear 
The  words  of  their  judge  ;  but  were  safe  without  an  avenger. 
Not  yet  the  pine  felled  on  its  mountains  had  descended 
To  the  liquid  waves  that  it  might  see  a  foreign  world, 
And  mortals  knew  no  shores  but  their  own. 

*  *  *  * 

There  was  eternal  spring,  and  placid  zephyrs  with  warm 
Blasts  soothed  the  flo  vers  born  without  seed." 


On  the  29th  of  April,  as  I  was  fishing  from  the 
of  the  river  near  the  Nine- Aore- Corner  bridge,  standing 
on  the  quaking  grass. and  willow  roots,  where  the  muskrats 
22 


838  WALDEN. 

lurk,  I  heard  a  singular  rattling  sound,  somewhat  like 
that  of  the  sticks  which  boys  play  with  their  fingers, 
when,  looking  up,  I  observed  a  very  slight  and  graceful 
hawk,  like  a  night-hawk,  alternately  soaring  like  a  rip 
ple  and  tumbling  a  rod  or  two  over  and  over,  showing 
the  underside  of  its  wings,  which  gleamed  like  a  satin 
ribbon  in  tho  sun,  or  like  the  pearly  inside  of  a  shell. 
This  sight  reminded  me  of  falconry  and  what  nobleness 
and  poetry  are  associated  with  that  sport.  The  Merlin 
it  seemed  to  me  it  might  be  called :  but  I  care  not  for 
its  name.  It  was  the  most  ethereal  flight  I  had  ever 
witnessed.  It  did  not  simply  flutter  like  a  butterfly,  nor 
soar  like  the  larger  hawks,  but  it  sported  with  proud  re 
liance  in  the  fields  of  air ;  mounting  again  and  again 
with  its  strange  chuckle,  it  repeated  its  free  and  beauti 
ful  fall,  turning  over  and  over  like  a  kite,  and  then  re 
covering  from  its  lofty  tumbling,  as  if  it  had  never  set 
its  foot  on  terra  jirma.  It  appeared  to  have  no  com 
panion  in  the  universe,  —  sporting  there  alone,  —  and 
to  need  none  but  the  morning  and  the  ether  with  which 
it  played.  It  was  not  lonely,  but  made  all  the  earth 
lonely  beneath  it.  Where  was  the  parent  which  hatched 
it,  its  kindred,  and  its  father  in  the  heavens  ?  The 
tenant  of  the  air,  it  seemed  related  to  the  earth  but  by  an 
egg  hatched  some  time  in  the  crevice  of  a  crag ;  —  or 
was  its  native  nest  made  in  the  angle  of  a  cloud,  woven 
of  the  rainbow's  trimmings  and  the  sunset  sky,  and 
lined  with  some  soft  midsummer  haze  caught  up  from 
earth  ?  Its  eyry  now  some  cliffy  cloud. 

Beside  this  I  got  a  rare  mess  of  golden  and  silver 
and  bright  cupreous  fishes,  which  looked  like  a  string  of 
jewels.  Ah !  I  have  penetrated  to  those  meadows  on 
the  morning  of  many  a  first  spring  day,  jumping  from 


SPRING.  339 

fcummock  to  hummock,  from  willow  root  to  willow  root, 
when  the  wild  river  valley  and  the  woods  were  bathed 
in  so  pure  and  bright  a  light  as  would  have  waked  the 
dead,  if  they  had  been  slumbering  in  their  graves,  as 
some  suppose.  There  needs  no  stronger  proof  of  im 
mortality.  All  things  must  live  in  such  a  light.  O 
Death,  where  was  thy  sting  ?  O  Grave,  where  was  thy 
victory,  then  ? 

Our  village  life  would  stagnate  if  it  were  not  for  the 
unexplored  forests  and  meadows  which  surround  it.  We 
need  the  tonic  of  wildness,  —  to  wade  sometimes  in 
marshes  where  the  bittern  and  the  meadow-hen  lurk, 
and  hear  the  booming  of  the  snipe ;  to  smell  the  whis 
pering  sedge  where  only  some  wilder  and  more  solitary 
fowl  builds  her  nest,  and  the  mink  crawls  with  its  belly 
close  to  the  ground.  At  the  same  time  that  we  are 
earnest  to  explore  and  learn  all  things,  we  require  that 
all  things  be  mysterious  and  unexplorable,  that  land  and 
sea  be  infinitely  wild,  unsurveyed  and  unfathomed  by  us 
because  unfathomable.  We  can  never  have  enough  of 
Nature.  We  must  be  refreshed  by  the  sight  of  inex 
haustible  vigor,  vast  and  Titanic  features,  the  sea-coast 
with  its  wrecks,  the  wilderness  with  its  living  and  its  de 
caying  trees,  the  thunder  cloud,  and  the  rain  which  lasts 
three  weeks  and  produces  freshets.  We  need  to  wit 
ness  our  own  limits  transgressed,  and  some  life  pastur 
ing  freely  where  we  never  wander.  We  are  cheered 
when  we  observe  the  vulture  feeding  on  the  carrion 
which  c[isgusts  and  disheartens  us  and  deriving  health 
and  strength  from  the  repast.  There  was  a  dead  horse 
in  the  hollow  by  the  path  to  my  house,  which  compelled 
me  sometimes  to  go  out  of  my  way,  especially  in  the 
oiglit  when  the  air  was  heavy,  bit'  the  assurance  it  gave 


340  WALDEN. 

me  of  the  strong  appetite  and  inviolable  health  of  Na 
ture  was  my  compensation  for  this.  I  love  to  see  that 
Nature  is  so  rife  with  life  that  myriads  can  be  afforded 
to  be  sacrificed  and  suffered  to  prey  on  one  another ; 
that  tender  organizations  can  be  so  serenely  squasiied 
out  of  existence  like  pulp,  —  tadpoles  which  herons  gob 
ble  up,  and  tortoises  and  toads  run  over  in  the  road ; 
and  that  sometimes  it  has  rained  flesh  and  blood  !  With 
the  liability  to  accident,  we  must  see  how  little  account 
is  to  be  made  of  it.  The  impression  made  on  a  wise 
man  is  that  of  universal  innocence.  Poison  is  not  poi 
sonous  after  all,  nor  are  any  wounds  fatal.  Compassion 
is  a  very  untenable  ground.  It  must  be  expeditious. 
Its  pleadings  will  not  bear  to  be  stereotyped. 

Early  in  May,  the  oaks,  hickories,  maples,  and  other 
trees,  just  putting  out  amidst  the  pine  woods  around 
the  pond,  imparted  a  brightness  like  sunshine  to  the 
landscape,  especially  in  cloudy  days,  as  if  the  sun  were 
breaking  through  mists  and  shining  faintly  on  the 
hill-sides  here  and  there.  On  the  third  or  fourth 
of  May  I  saw  a  loon  in  the  pond,  and  during  the 
first  week  of  the  month  I  heard  the  whippoorwill, 
the  brown-thrasher,  the  veery,  the  wood-pewee,  the  che- 
wink,  and  other  birds.  I  had  heard  the  wood-thrush 
long  before.  The  phoebe  had  already  come  once  more 
and  looked  in  at  my  door  and  window,  to  see  if  my 
house  was  cavern-like  enough  for  her,  sustaining  herself 
on  humming  wings  with  clinched  talons,  as  if  she  held  by 
the  air,  while  she  surveyed  the  premises.  The  sulphur- 
like  pollen  of  the  pitch-pine  soon  covered  the  pond  and 
the  stones  and  rotten  wood  along  the  shore,  so  that  you 
could  have  collected  a  barrel -ful.  This  is  the  "  sulphur 
showers  "  we  hear  of.  Even  in  Calidas'  drama  of  Sa- 


SPRING.  341 

contala,  we  read  of  "  rills  dyed  yellow  with  the  golden 
dust  of  the  lo'.us."  And  so  the  seasons  went  rolling  on 
into  summer,  as  one  rambles  into  higher  and  higher 
grass. 

Thus  was  my  first  year's  life  in  the  woods  completed ; 
and  the  second  year  was  similar  to  it.  I  finally  left 
Walden  September  6th,  1847 


CONCLUSION. 


To  the  sick  the  doctors  wisely  recommend  a  change 
of  air  and  scenery.  Thank  Heaven,  here  is  not  all  the 
world.  The  buck-eye  does  not  grow  in  New  England, 
and  the  mocking-bird  is  rarely  heard  here.  The  wild- 
goose  is  more  of  a  cosmopolite  than  we ;  he  breaks  his 
fast  in  Canada,  takes  a  luncheon  in  the  Ohio,  and 
plumes  himself  for  the  night  in  a  southern  bayou. 
Even  the  bison,  to  some  extent,  keeps  pace  with  the 
seasons,  cropping  the  pastures  of  the  Colorado  only  till 
a  greener  and  sweeter  grass  awaits  him  by  the  Yellow 
stone.  Yet  we  think  that  if  rail-fences  are  pulled  down, 
and  stone-walls  piled  up  on  our  farms,  bounds  are 
henceforth  set  to  our  lives  and  our  fates  decided.  If 
you  are  chosen  town-clerk,  forsooth,  you  cannot  go  to 
Tierra  del  Fuego  this  summer :  but  you  may  go  to  the 
land  of  infernal  fire  nevertheless.  "The  universe  is 
wiler  than  our  views  of  it. 

Yet  we  should  oftener  look  over  the  tafferel  of  our 
craft,  like  curious  passengers,  and  not  make  the  voyage 
like  stupid  sailors  picking  oakum.  The  other  side  of 
the  glebe  is  but  the  home  of  our  correspondent.  Our 

r.342) 


CONCLUSION.  343 

voyaging  is  jnly  great-circle  sailing,  and  the  doctors 
prescribe  for  diseases  of  the  skin  merely.  One  hastens 
to  Southern  Africa  to  chase  the  giraffe ;  but  surely  that 
is  not  the  game  he  would  be  after.  How  long,  pray, 
would  a  man  hunt  giraffes  if  he  could?  Snipes  and 
woodcocks  also  .may  afford  rare  sport ;  but  I  trust  it 
would  be  nobler  game  to  shoot  one's  self.  — 

"  Direct  your  eye  right  inward,  and  you'll  find 
A  thousand  regions  in  your  mind 
Yet  undiscovered.    Travel  them,  and  be 
Expert  in  home-cosmography." 

"What  does  Africa, — what  does  the  West  stand  for? 
Is  not  our  own  interior  white  on  the  chart?  black 
though  it  may  prove,  like  the  coast,  when  discovered. 
Is  it  the  source  of  the  Nile,  or  the  Niger,  or  the  Missis 
sippi,  or  a  North- West  Passage  around  this  continent, 
that  we  would  find?  Are  these  the  problems  which 
most  concern  mankind?  Is  Franklin  the  only  man 
who  is  lost,  that  his  wife  should  be  so  earnest  to  find 
him  ?  Does  Mr.  Grinnell  know  where  he  himself  is  ? 
Be  rather  the  Mungo  Park,  the  Lewis  and  Clarke  and 
Frobisher,  of  your  own  streams  and  oceans;  explore 
your  own  higher  latitudes, — with  shiploads  of  preserved 
meats  to  support  you,  if  they  be  necessary ;  and  pile  the 
empty  cans  sky-high  for  a  sign.  Were  preserved  meats 
invented  to  preserve  meat  merely  ?  Nay,  be  a  Colum 
bus  to  whole  new  continents  and  worlds  within  you, 
opening  new  channels,  not  of  trade,  but  of  thought. 
Every  man  is  the  lord  of  a  realm  beside  which  the 
earthly  empire  of  the  Czar  is  but  a  petty  state,  a  hum 
mock  left  by  the  ice.  Yet  some  can  be  patriotic  who 
have  no  self-respect,  and  sacrifice  the  greater  to  the  less. 


344  '  WALDEff. 

They  love  the  soil  which  makes  their  graves,  but  have 
no  sympathy  with  the  spirit  which  may  still  animate 
their  clay.  Patriotism  is  a  maggot  in  their  heads. 
What  was  the  meaning  of  that  South-Sea  Exploring 
Expedition,  with  all  its  parade  and  expense,  but  an  in 
direct  recognition  of  the  fact,  that  there  are  continents 
and  seas  in  the  moral  world,  to  which  every  man  is  an 
isthmus  or  an  inlet,  yet  unexplored  by  him,  but  that  it 
is  easier  to  sail  many  thousand  miles  through  cold  and 
storm  and  cannibals,  in  a  government  ship,  with  five 
hundred  men  and  boys  to  assist  one,  than  it  is  to  ex 
plore  the  private  sea,  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  Ocean 
of  one's  being  alone.  — 

"  Erret,  et  extremes  alter  scrutetur  Iberos. 
Plus  habet  hie  vitae,  plus  habet  ille  vise." 

Let  them  wander  and  scrutinize  the  outlandish  Australians, 
I  have  more  of  God,  they  more  of  the  road. 

f 

It  is  not  worth  the  while  to  go  round  the  world  to  count 
the  cats  in  Zanzibar.  Yet  do  this  even  till  you  can  do 
better,  and  you  may  perhaps  find  some  "  Symmes' 
Hole  "  by  which  to  get  at  the  inside  at  last.  England 
and  France,  Spain  and  Portugal,  Gold  Coast  and  Slave 
Coast,  all  front  on  this  private  sea ;  but  no  bark  from 
them  has  ventured  out  of  sight  of  land,  though  it  is 
without  doubt  the  direct  way  to  India.  If  you  would 
learn  to  speak  all  tongues  and  conform  to  the  customs 
of  all  nations,  if  you  would  travel  farther  than  all  trav 
ellers,  be  naturalized  in  all  climes,  and  cause  the  Sphinx 
to  dash  her  head  against  a  stone,  even  obey  the  precept 
of  the  old  philosopher,  and  Explore  thyself.  Herein  are 
demanded  the  eye  and  the  nerve.  Only  the  defeated 


CONCLUSION.  345 

ftn£  Deserters  go  to  the  wars,  cowards  that  run  away 
and  enlist.  Start  now  on  that  farthest  western  way, 
which  does  not  pause  at  the  Mississippi  or  the  Pacific, 
nor  conduct  toward  a  worn-out  China  or  Japan,  but  leads 
on  direct  a  tangent  to  this  sphere,  summer  and  winter, 
day  and  night,  sun  down,  moon  down,  and  at  last  earth 
down  too. 

It  is  said  that  Mirabeau  took  to  highway  robbery  "  to 
ascertain  what  degree  of  resolution  was  necessary  in  or 
der  to  place  one's  self  in  formal  opposition  to  the  most 
sacred  laws  of  society."  He  declared  that  "a  soldier 
who  fights  in  the  ranks  does  not  require  half  so  much 
courage  as  a  foot-pad," — "that  honor  and  religion  have 
never  stood  in  the  way  of  a  well-considered  and  a  firm 
resolve."  This  was  manly,  as  the  world  goes ;  and  yet 
it  was  idle,  if  not  desperate.  A  saner  man  would  have 
found  himself  often  enough  "in  formal  opposition"  to 
what  are  deemed  "the  most  sacred  laws  of  society," 
through  obedience  to  yet  n\ore  sacred  laws,  and  so  have 
tested  his  resolution  without  going  out  of  his  way.  It 
is  not  for  "a  man  to  put  himself  in  such  an  attitude  to 
society,  but  to  maintain  himself  in  whatever  attitude  he 
find  himself  through  obedience  to  the  laws  of  his  being, 
which  will  never  be  one  of  opposition  to  a  just  govern 
ment,  if  he  should  chance  to  meet  with  such. 

I  left  the  woods  for  as  good  a  reason  as  I  went  there. 
Perhaps  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  had  several  more  livefc 
to  live,  and  could  not  spare  any  more  time  for  that  one 
It  is  remarkable  how  easily  and  insensibly  we  fall  kit* 
a  particular  route,  and  make  a  beaten  track  for  our 
selves.  I  had  not  lived  there  a  week  before  my  ieei 
wore  a  path  from  my  door  to  the  pond-side  ;  and  thoug 
it  is  five  or  six  years  since  I  trod  it,  it  is  still  quite 


346  'WALDEN. 

distinct.  It  is  tr.ie,  I  fear  that  others  may  have  fallen 
into  it,  and  so  helped  to  keep  it  open.  The  surface  of  the 
earth  is  soft  and  impressible  by  the  feet  of  men ;  and  so 
with  the  paths  which  the  mind  travels.  How  worn  and 
dusty,  then,  must  be  the  highways  of  the  world,  how  deep 
the  ruts  of  tradition  and  conformity !  I  did  not  wish  to 
take  a  cabin  passage,  but  rather  to  go  before  the  mast 
and  on  the  deck  of  the  world,  for  there  I  could  best  see 
the  moonlight  amid  the  mountains.  I  do  not  wish  to 
go  below  now. 

I  learned  this,  at  least,  by  my  experiment ;  that  if  one 
advances  confidently  in  the  direction  of  his  dreams,  and 
endeavors  to  live  the  life  which  he  has  imagined,  he  will 
meet  with  a  success  unexpected  in  common  hours.  He 
.will  put  some  things  behind,  will  pass  an  invisible  bound 
ary  ;  new,  universal,  and  more  liberal  laws  will  begin 
to  establish  themselves  around  and  within  him ;  or  the 
old  laws  be  expanded,  and  interpreted  in  his  favor  in  a 
more  liberal  sense,  and  he  will  live  with  the  license  of 
a  higher  order  of  beings.  In  proportion  as  he  simpli 
fies  his  life,  the  laws  of  the  universe  will  appear  less 
complex,  and  solitude  will  not  be  solitude,  nor  poverty 
poverty,  nor  weakness  weakness.  If  you  have  built 
castles  in  the  air,  your  work  need  not  be  lost ;  that  is 
where  they  should  be.  Now  put  the  foundations  under 
them. 

It  is  a  ridiculous  demand  which  England  and  Amer 
ica  make,  that  you  shall  speak  so  that  they  can  under 
stand  you.  Neither  men  nor  toad-stools  grow  so.  As 
if  that  were  important,1  and  there  were  not  enough  to 
understand  you  without  them.  As  if  Nature  could 
support  but  one  order  of  understandings,  could  not  sus 
tain  birds  as  well  as  quadrupeds,  flying  as  well  as  creep- 


CONCLUSION.  347 

ing  things,  and  hush  and  who,  which  Bright  can  under 
stand,  were  the  best  English.  As  if  there  were  safety 
in  stupidity  alone.  I  fear  chiefly  lest  my  expression  may 
not  be  extra-  vagant  enough,  may  not  wander  far  enough 
beyond  the  narrow  limits  of  my  daily  experience,  so  as  to 
be  adequate  to  the  truth  of  which  I  have  been  convinced. 
Extra  vagance !  it  depends  on  how  you  are  yarded. 
The  migrating  buffalo,  which  seeks  new  pastures  in 
another  latitude,  is  not  extravagant  like  the  cow  which 
kicks  over  the  pail,  leaps  the  cow-yard  fence,  and 
runs  after  her  calf,  in  milking  time.  I  desire  to  speak 
somewhere  without  bounds;  like  a  man  in  a  waking 
moment,  to  men  in  their  waking  moments ;  for  I  am 
convinced  that  I  cannot  exaggerate  enough  even  to  lay 
the  foundation  of  a  true  expression.  Who  that  has 
heard  a  strain  of  music  feared  then  lest  he  should 
speak  extravagantly  any  more  forever  ?  In  view  of  the 
future  or  possible,  we  should  live  quite  laxly  and  unde 
fined  in  front,  our  outlines  dim  and  misty  on  that  side ; 
as  our  shadows  reveal  an  insensible  perspiration  toward 
the  sun.  The  volatile  truth  of  our  words  should  con 
tinually  betray  the  inadequacy  of  the  residual  statement. 
Their  truth  is  instantly  translated  ;  its  literal  monument 
alone  remains.  The  words  which  express  our  faith  and 
piety  are  not  definite ;  yet  they  are  significant  and  fra 
grant  like  frankincense  to  superior  natures. 

Why  level  downward  to  our  dullest  perception  al 
ways,  and  praise  that  as  common  sense  ?  The  com 
monest  sense  is  the  sense  of  men  asleep,  which  they  ex 
press  by  snoring.  Sometimes  we  are  inclined  to  class 
those  who  are  once-and-a-half  witted  with  the  half 
witted,  because  we  appreciate  only  a  third  part  of  their 
wit.  Some  would  find  fault  with  the  morning-red,  if 


848" 


WALDEN. 


(hey  ever  got  up  early  enough.  "  They  pretend,"  us  I 
hear,  "that  the  verses  of  Kabir  have  four  different 
senses;  illusion,  spirit,  intellect,  and  the  exoteric  doc 
trine  of  the  Yedas;"  but  in  this  part  of  the  world  it  is 
considered  a  ground  for  complaint  if  a  man's  writings 
admit  of  more  than  one  interpretation.  While  England 
endeavors  to  cure  the  potato-rot,  will  not  any  endeavor 
to  cure  the  brain-rot,  which  prevails  so  much  more 
widely  and  fatally  ? 

1  do  not  suppose  that  I  have  attained  to  obscurity, 
but  I  should  be  proud  if  no  more  fatal  fault  were  found 
with  my  pages  on  this  score  than  was  found  with  the 
Walden  ice.  Southern  customers  objected  to  its  blue 
color,  which  is  the  evidence  of  its  purity,  as  if  it  were 
muddy,  and  preferred  the  Cambridge  ice,  which  is  white, 
but  tastes  of  weeds.  The  purity  men  love  is  like  the 
mists  which  envelop  the  earth,  and  not  like  the  azure 
ether  beyond. 

Some  are  dinning  in  our  ears  that  we  Americans, 
and  moderns  generally,  are  intellectual  dwarfs  compared 
with  the  ancients,  or  even  the  Elizabethan  men.  But 
what  is  that  to  the  purpose  ?  A  living  dog  is  better 
than  a  dead  lion.  Shall  a  man  go  and  hang  himself  be 
cause  he  belongs  to  the  race  of  pygmies,  and  not  be  the 
biggest  pygmy  that  he  can  ?  Let  every  one  mind  his 
own  business,  and  endeavor  to  be  what  he  was  made. 

Why  should  we  be  in  such  desperate  haste  to  suc 
ceed,  and  in  such  desperate  enterprises?  If  a  man 
does  not  keep  pace  with  his  companions,  perhaps  it  is 
because  he  hears  a  different  drummer.  Let  him  step 
to  the  music  which  he  hears,  however  measured  or 
far  away.  It  is  not  important  that  he  should  mature 
as  soon  as  an  apple-tree  or  an  oak.  Shall  he  turn  his 


CONCLUSION.  349 

wpring  inu,  summer  ?  If  the  condition  of  things  whi^h 
we  were  made  for  is  not  yet,  what  .were;  any  reality 
which  we  can  substitute  ?  We  will  not  be  shipwrecked 
on  a  vain  reality.  Shall  we  with  pains  erect  a  heaven 
of  blue  glass  over  ourselves,  though  when  it  is  done 
we  shall  be  sure  to  gaze  still  at  the  true  ethereal  heaven 
far  above,  as  if  the  former  were  not  ? 

There  was  an  artist  in  the  city  of  Kouroo  who  was 
disposed  to  strive  after  perfection.  One  day  it  came 
into  his  mind  to  make  a  staff.  Having  considered  that 
in  an  imperfect  work  time  is  an  ingredient,  but  into  a 
perfect  work  time  does  not  enter,  he  said  to  himself,  It 
shall  be  perfect  in  all  respects,  though  I  should  do  noth 
ing  else  in  my  life.  He  proceeded  instantly  to  the 
forest  for  wood,  being  resolved  that  it  should  not  be 
made  of  unsuitable  material ;  and  as  he  searched  for 
and  rejected  stick  after  stick,  his  friends  gradually  de 
serted  him,  for  they  grew  old  in  their  works  and  died, 
but  he  grew  not  older  by  a  moment.  His  singleness  of 
purpose  and  resolution,  and  his  elevated  piety,  endowed 
him,  without  his  knowledge,  with  perennial  youth.  As 
he  made  no  compromise  with  Time,  Time  kept  out  of 
his  way,  and  only  sighed  at  a  distance  because  he  could 
not  overcome  him.  Before  he  had  found  a  stock  in  all 
respects  suitable  the  city  of  Kouroo  was  a  hoary  ruin, 
and  he  sat  on  one  of  its  mounds  to  peel  the  stick.  Be 
fore  he  had  given  it  the  proper  shape  the  dynasty  of 
the  Candahars  was  at  an  end,  and  with  the  point  of  the 
stick  he  wrote  the  name  of  the  last  of  that  race  in  the 
sand,  and  then  resumed  his  work.  By  the  time  he  had 
smoothed  and  polished  the  staff  Kalpa  was  no  longer 
the  pole-star ;  and  ere  he  had  put  on  the  ferule  and  the 
head  adorned  with  precious  stone.-,  3ralima  had  aw  ok  3 


350  WALDEN. 

and  slumbered  many  times.  But  why  do  I  stay  to  men 
tion  these  things  ?  When  the  finishing  stroke  was  put 
to  his  work,  it  suddenly  expanded  before  the  eyes  of  the 
astonished  artist  into  the  fairest  of  all  the  creations  of 
Brahma.  He  had  made  a  new  system  in  making  a 
staff,  a  world  with  full  and  fair  proportions  ;  in  which, 
though  the  old  cities  and  dynasties  had  passed  away, 
fairer  and  more  glorious  ones  had  taken  their  places. 
And  now  he  saw  by  the  heap  of  shavings  still  fresh  at 
his  feet,  that,  for  him  and  his  work,  the  former  lapse 
of  time  had  been  an  illusion,  and  that  no  more  time  had 
elapsed  than  is  required  for  a  single  scintillation  from 
the  brain  of  Brahma  to  fall  on  and  inflame  the  tinder 
of  a  mortal  brain.  The  material  was  pure,  and  his  art 
was  pure  ;  how  could  the  result  be  other  than  wonderful  ? 

No  face  which  we  can  give  to  a  matter  will  stead  us 
so  well  at  last  as  the  truth.  This  alone  wears  well. 
For  the  most  part,  we  are  not  where  we  are,  but  in  a 
false  position.  Through  an  infirmity  of  our  natures,  we 
suppose  a  case,  and  put  ourselves  into  it,  and  hence  are 
in  two  cases  at  the  same  time,  and  it  is  doubly  difficult 
to  get  out.  In  sane  moments  we  regard  only  the  facts, 
the  case  that  is.  Say  what  you  have  to  say,  not  what  you 
ought.  Any  truth  is  better  than  make-believe.  Tom 
Hyde,  the  tinker,  standing  on  the  gallows,  was  asked  if  he 
had  any  thing  to  say.  "  Tell  the  tailors,"  said  he,  "to  re 
member  to  make  a  knot  in  their  thread  before  they  take 
the  first  stitch."  His  companion's  prayer  is  forgotten. 

However  mean  your  life  is,  meet  it  and  live  it ;  do 
not  shun  it  and  call  it  hard  names.  It  is  not  so  bad  as 
you  are**  It  looks  poorest  when  you  are  richest.  The 
fault-  finder  will  find  faults  even  in  paradise.  Love 
your  life,  poor  as  it  is.  You  may  perhaps  have  some 


CONCLUSION.  351 

pleasant,  thrilling,  glorious  hours,  even  in  a  poor-house. 
The  setting  sun  is  reflected  from  the  windows  of  the 
alms-house  as  brightly  as  from  the  rich  man's  abode; 
the  snow  melts  before  its  door  as  early  in  the  spring.  I 
do  not  see  but  a  quiet  mind  may  live  as  contentedly 
there,  and  have  as  cheering  thoughts,  as  in  a  palace. 
The  town's  poor  seem  to  me  often  to  live  the  most  inde 
pendent  lives  of  any.  May  be  they  are  simply  great 
enough  to  receive  without  misgiving.  Most  think  that 
they  are  above  being  supported  by  the  town ;  but  it 
oftener  happens  that  they  are  not  above  supporting 
themselves  by  dishonest  means,  which  should  be  more 
disreputable.  Cultivate  poverty  like  a  garden  herb, 
like  sage.  Do  not  trouble  yourself  much  to  get  new 
things,  whether  clothes  or  friends.  Turn  the  old ;  re 
turn  to  them.  Things  do  not  change ;  we  change.  Sell 
your  clothes  and  keep  your  thoughts.  God  will  see 
that  you  do  not  want  society.  If  I  were  confined  to  a 
corner  of  a  garret  all  my  days,  like  a  spider,  the  world 
would  be  just  as  large  to  me  while  I  had  my  thoughts 
about  me.  The  philosopher  said  :  "  From  an  army  of 
three  divisions  one  can  take  away  its  general,  and  put  it 
in  disorder  ;  from  the  man  the  most  abject  and  vulgar  one 
cannot  take  away  his  thought."  Do  not  seek  so  anx 
iously  to  be  developed,  to  subject  yourself  to  many  in 
fluences  to  be  played  on  ;  it  is  all  dissipation.  Hu 
mility  like  darkness  reveals  the  heavenly  lights.  The 
shadows  of  poverty  and  meanness  gather  around  us, 
"  and  lo  !  creation  widens  to  our  view."  We  are  often 
reminded  that  if  there  were  bestowed  on  us  the  wealth 
of  Croesus,  our  aims  must  still  be  the  same,  and  our 
means  essentially  the  same.  Moreover,  if  you  are  re 
stricted  in  your  range  by  poverty,  if  you  cannot  buy 


852  WALDEN. 

books  and  newspapers,  for  instance,  you  are  but  con 
fined  to  the  most  significant  and  vital  experiences ;  you 
are  compelled  to  deal  with  the  material  which  yields  the 
most  sugar  and  the  most  starch.  It  is  life  near  the  bone 
where  it  is  sweetest.  You  are  defended  from  being  a 
trifler.  No  man  loses  ever  on  a  lower  level  by  mag 
nanimity  on  a  higher.  Superfluous  wealth  can  buy  su 
perfluities  only.  Money  is  not  required  to  buy  one 
necessary  of  the  soul. 

I  live  in  the  angle  of  a  leaden  wall,  into  whose  com 
position  was  poured  a  little  alloy  of  bell  metal.  Often, 
in  the  repose  of  my  mid-day,  there  reaches  my  ears  a 
confused  tintinnabulum  from  without.  It  is  the  noise 
of  my  contemporaries.  My  neighbors  tell  me  of  their 
adventures  with  famous  gentlemen  and  ladies,. what  no 
tabilities  they  met  at  the  dinner-table  ;  but  I  am  no 
more  interested  in  such  things  than  in  the  contents  of  the 
Daily  Times.  The  interest  and  the  conversation  are 
about  costume  and  manners  chiefly ;  but  a  goose  is  a 
goose  still,  dress  it  as  you  will.  They  tell  me  of  Cali 
fornia  and  Texas,  of  England  and  the  Indies,  of  the 

Hon.    Mr. of    Georgia   or  of  Massachusetts,  all 

transient  and  fleeting  phenomena,  till  I  am  ready  to 
leap  from  their  court-yard  like  the  Mameluke  bey.  I 
delight  to  come  to  my  bearings,  —  not  walk  in  proces 
sion  with  pomp  and  parade,  in  a  conspicuous  place,  but 
to  walk  even  with  the  Builder  of  the  universe,  if  I  may, 
—  not  to  live  in  this  restless,  nervous,  bustling,  trivial 
Nineteenth  Century,  but  stand  or  sit  thoughtfully  while 
it  goes  by.  What  are  men  celebrating  ?  They  are  all 
on  a  committee  of  arrangements,  and  hourly  expect  a 
speech  from  somebody.  God  is  only  the  president  of 
the  day,  and  Webster  is  his  orator.  I  love  to  weigh,  to 


CONCLUSION.  353 

settle,  to  gravitate  toward  that  which  most  strongly  and 
rightfully  attracts  me  ;  —  not  hang  by  the  beam  of  the 
scale  and  try  to  weigh  less,  —  not  suppose  a  case,  but 
take  the  case  that  is ;  to  travel  the  only  path  I  can, 
and  that  on  which  no  power  can  resist  me.  It  affords 
me  no  satisfaction  to  commence  to  spring  an  arch  before 
I  have  got  a  solid  foundation.  Let  us  not  play  at  kit- 
tlybenders.  There  is  a  solid  bottom  every  where.  We 
read  that  the  traveller  asked  the  boy  if  the  swamp  be 
fore  him  had  a  hard  bottom.  The  boy  replied  that 
it  had.  But  presently  the  traveller's  horse  sank  in  up 
to  the  girths,  and  he  observed  to  the  boy,  "  I  thought 
you  said  that  this  bog  had  a  hard  bottom."  "  So  it  has," 
answered  the  latter,  "  but  you  have  not  got  half  way  to 
it  yet."  So  it  is  with  the  bogs  and  quicksands  of  so 
ciety  ;  but  he  is  an  old  boy  that  knows  it.  Only  what 
is  thought  said  or  done  at  a  certain  rare  coincidence  is 
good.  I  would  not  be  one  of  those  who  will  foolishly 
drive  a  nail  into  mere  lath  and  plastering ;  such  a  deed 
would  keep  me  awake  nights.  Give  me  a  hammer,  and 
let  me  feel  for  the  furrowing.  Do  not  depend  on  the 
putty.  Drive  a  nail  home  and  clinch  it  so  faithfully 
that  you  can  wake  up  in  the  night  and  think  of  your 
work  with  satisfaction,  —  a  work  at  which  you  would 
not  be  ashamed  to  invoke  the  Muse.  So  will  help  you 
God,  and  so  only.  Every  nail  driven  should  be  as 
another  rivet  in  the  machine  of  the  universe,  you  car 
rying  on  the  work. 

Rather  than  love,  than  money,  than  fame,  give  me 

truth.     I  sat  at  a  table  where  were  rich  food  and  wine 

in  abundance,  and  obsequious  attendance,  but  sincerity 

and  truth  were  not ;  and  I  went  away  hungry  from  the 

23 


354  WALDEN. 

inhospitable  board.  The  hospitality  was  as  cold  as  the 
ices.  I  thought  that  there  was  no  need  of  ice  to  freeze 
them.  They  talked  to  me  of  the  age  of  the  wine  and 
the  fame  of  the  vintage ;  but  I  thought  of  an  older,  a 
newer,  and  purer  wine,  of  a  more  glorious  vintage, 
which  they  had  not  got,  and  could  not  buy.  The  style, 
the  house  and  grounds  and  "entertainment"  pass  for 
nothing  with  me.  I  called  on  the  king,  but  he  made  me 
wait  in  his  hall,  and  conducted  like  a  man  incapacitated 
for  hospitality.  There  was  a  man  in  my  neighborhood 
who  lived  in  a  hollow  tree.  His  manners  were  truly 
regal.  I  should  have  done  better  had  I  called  on 
him. 

How  long  shall  we  sit  in  our  porticoes  practising  idle 
and  musty  virtues,  which  any  work  would  make  imper 
tinent  ?  As  if  one  were  to  begin  the  day  with  long- 
suffering,  and  hire  a  man  to  hoe  his  potatoes ;  and  in 
the  afternoon  go  forth  to  practise  Christian  meekness 
and  charity  with  goodness  aforethought !  Consider  the 
China  pride  and  stagnant  self-complacency  of  mankind. 
This  generation  reclines  a  little  to  congratulate  itself  on 
being  the  last  of  an  illustrious  line ;  and  in  Boston  and 
London  arid  Paris  and  Rome,  thinking  of  its  long  de 
scent,  it  speaks  of  its  progress  in  art  and  science  and 
literature  with  satisfaction.  There  are  the  Records  of 
the  Philosophical  Societies,  and  the  public  Eulogies  of 
Great  Men  !  It  is  the  good  Adam  contemplating  his 
own  virtue.  "  Yes,  we  have  done  great  deeds,  and  sung 
divine  songs,  which  shall  never  die," — that  is,  as  long 
as  we  can  remember  them.  The  learned  societies  and 
great  men  of  Assyria,  —  where  are  they  ?  What  youth- 
*id  philosophers  and  experimentalists  we  are  !  There  ia 


CONCLUSION.  355 

not  one  of  my  readers  who  has  yet  lived  a  whole  hu» 
man  life.  These  may  be  but  the  spring  months  in  the 
life  of  the  race.  If  we  have  had  the  seven-years'  itch, 
we  have  not  seen  the  seventeen-year  locust  yet  in  Con 
cord.  We  are  acquainted  with  a  mere  pellicle  of  the 
globe  on  which  we  live.  Most  have  not  delved  six  feet 
beneath  the  surface,  nor  leaped  as  many  above  it.  We 
know  not  where  we  are.  Beside,  we  are  sound  asleep 
nearly  half  our  time.  Yet  we  esteem  ourselves  wise, 
and  have  an  established  order  on  the  surface.  Truly, 
we  are  deep  thinkers,  we  are  ambitious  spirits  !  As  I 
stand  over  the  insect  crawling  amid  the  pine  needles  on 
the  forest  floor,  and  endeavoring  to  conceal  itself  from 
my  sight,  and  ask  myself  why  it  will  cherish  those  hum 
ble  thoughts,  and  hide  its  head  from  me  who  might, 
perhaps,  be  its  benefactor,  and  impart  to  its  race  some 
cheering  information,  I  am  reminded  of  the  greater 
Benefactor  and  Intelligence  that  stands  over  me  the 
human  insect. 

There  is  an  incessant  influx  of  novelty  into  the  world, 
and  yet  we  tolerate  incredible  dulness.  I  need  only 
suggest  what  kind  of  sermons  are  still  listened  to  in  the 
most  enlightened  countries.  There  are  such  words  as 
joy  and  sorrow,  but  they  are  only  the  burden  of  a  psalm, 
sung  with  a  nasal  twang,  while  we  believe  in  the  ordi 
nary  and  mean.  We  think  that  we  can  change  our 
clothes  only.  It  is  said  that  the  British  Empire  is 
very  large  and  respectable,  and  that  the  United  States 
are  a  first-rate  power.  We  do  not  believe  that  a  tide 
rises  and  falls  behind  every  man  which  can  float  the 
British  Empire  like  a  chip,  if  he  should  ever  harbor  it 
in  his  mind.  Who  knows  what  sort  of  seventeen-year 


856  WALDEX. 

locust  will  next  come  out  of  the  ground  ?  Tlie  gov« 
ernment  of  the  world  I  live  in  was  not  framed,  like 
that  of  Britain,  in  after-dinner  conversations  over  the 
wine. 

The  life  in  us  is  like  the  water  in  the  river.  It  may 
rise  this  year  higher  than  man  has  ever  known  it,  and 
flood  the  parched  uplands  ;  even  this  may  be  the  event 
ful  year,  which  will  drown  out  all  our  muskrats.  It  was 
not  always  dry  land  where  we  dwell.  I  see  far  inland 
the  banks  which  the  stream  anciently  washed,  before 
science  began  to  record  its  freshets.  Every  one  has 
heard  the  story  which  has  gone  the  rounds  of  New 
England,  of  a  strong  and  beautiful  bug  which  came  out 
of  the  dry  leaf  of  an  old  table  of  apple-tree  wood,  which 
had  stood  ill  a  farmer's  kitchen  for  sixty  years,  first  in 
Connecticut,  and  afterward  in  Massachusetts,  — from  an 
egg  deposited  in  the  living  tree  many  years  earlier  still, 
as  appeared  by  counting  the  annual  layers  beyond  it ; 
which  was  heard  gnawing  out  for  several  weeks,  hatched 
perchance  by  the  heat  of  an  urn.  Who  does  not  feel  his 
faith  in  a  resurrection  and  immortality  strengthened  by 
hearing  of  this  ?  Who  knows  what  beautiful  and 
winged  life,  whose  egg  has  been  buried  for  ages  un 
der  many  concentric  layers  of  woodenness  in  the  dead 
dry  life  of  society,  deposited  at  first  in  the  alburnum  of 
the  green  and  living  tree,  which  has  been  gradually  con 
verted  into  the  semblance  of  its  well-seasoned  tomb,  — 
heard  perchance  gnawing  out  now  for  years  by  the  as 
tonished  family  of  man,  as  they  sat  round  the  festive 
board,  —  may  unexpectedly  come  forth  from  amidst  so 
ciety's  most  trivial  and  handselled  furniture,  to  enjoy  it 
perfect  summer  life  at  last ! 


CONCLUSION.  357 

1  do  not  say  that  John  or  Jonathan  will  realize  all 
this ;  but  such  is  the  character  of  that  morrow  which 
mere  lapse  of  time  can  never  make  to  dawn.  The  light 
which  puts  out  our  eves  is  darkness  to  us.  Only  that 
day  dawns  to  which  we  are  awake.  There  is  more  day 
to  dawn.  The  sun  is  but  a  morning  star. 


THE   END. 


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